Perhaps no other watch series has left as much of an impact on the streetwear community as the long-running Casio G-Shock line. G-Shocks have been a streetwear wardrobe staple for nearly as long as the subculture has existed, and as the G-Shock line has expanded over the years Casio has forged a variety of partnerships with high-profile streetwear names. The brand’s latest design comes in collaboration with skate culture brand Alife, which brings a starkly monochrome new take on one of the brand’s signature silhouettes inspired by the feel of New York City after dark. With a clean concrete gray colorway and unique visual flourishes, the new limited edition Casio G-Shock GA110ALIFE21-8A adds a moody and high-impact new chapter to the brand’s ongoing relationship with the streetwear scene.

Like the rest of the GA110 family, the Casio G-Shock GA110ALIFE21-8A’s 51.2mm-wide, 16.9mm-thick resin case should carry an imposing presence on the wrist. The pale matte gray monochrome color palette works to compress and simplify the case’s heavy, industrial-inspired angles and ridges in images, making the blend of raised segments and squared-off cutouts feel powerfully monolithic. There’s an almost brutalist feel to the case design here, as if the whole form was cast as a single block of concrete. The line’s familiar heavily guarded quartet of knurled pushers and broad stepped bezel help to further the sense of visual depth in images, thanks especially to the bezel’s engraved text. Casio tops the brushed stainless steel caseback with an engraved Alife logo, and rates the watch for a hefty 200 meters of water resistance.

The ana-digi dial of the Casio G-Shock GA110ALIFE21-8A carries on the case’s stark concrete gray color scheme, but here the brand adds a group of custom touches that set this model apart from the rest of the line. The most unique and intriguing of these comes through the outer chapter ring flanking the series’ distinctive “musical scale” minutes track and applied wedge indices. Alife’s light, swoopy serif script is used for unorthodox printed markings at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock, but Casio takes this stylistic statement a step further at 12 o’clock. Here, a strikingly poetic text marker labels 12 o’clock as “the witching hour.” While this may seem at odds with the heavy, construction-equipment styling of the base model, Casio claims this unique touch is a reference to both the folk beliefs surrounding the supernatural significance of midnight and the vibrant nightlife of New York City. A matching printed Alife logo adorns the raised three-pronged segment separating the analog and digital subdials at 3 o’clock as well. From here, the rest of the dial layout is classic GA110, with twin semicircular digital subdials flanked by a pair of playful steampunk-inflected gear-counterweighted skeleton hands and a silver azurage subdial at 9 o’clock that provides the watch’s only real reflective highlight in images.

Casio powers the G-Shock GA110ALIFE21-8A with its in-house Module 5146 quartz movement. Like most G-Shock powerplants, the Module 5146 is both incredibly durable and highly versatile. The Module 5146 sports a broad array of complications including a world timer, a 1/1000 second chronograph, five programmable daily alarms, a 24-hour countdown timer, an hourly time signal, a perpetual calendar accurate to the year 2099, and LED dial illumination. Casio claims an accuracy of +15/-15 seconds per month, along with a battery life of two years. Casio pairs G-Shock GA110ALIFE21-8A with its familiar integrated accordion-style resin strap in matching pale gray to complete the urban architecture-inspired monochrome look.

By adding a clean new gray-on-gray color palette and unique city-inspired touches to the fan-favorite GA110 platform, the new limited edition Casio G-Shock GA110ALIFE21-8A adds a distinctive new entry to the brand’s extensive streetwear catalog. Although Casio confirms the G-Shock GA110ALIFE21-8A is a limited edition model, the brand does not specify how many units will be produced. The watch is available now through the brand’s online store and will be available through the G-Shock SoHo Store on May 18, 2022. MSRP for the Casio G-Shock GA110ALIFE21-8A stands at $180 as of press time. For more details, please visit the brand’s website.