It was a little over a year ago that Aquastar returned from a long period of dormancy with the Deepstar Chronograph, a watch that immediately became a favorite among dive watch aficionados for its fidelity to the original Aquastar aesthetic. This is a brand that was never a household name, and the fact that it was brought back with a level of care and attention to detail that paid genuine tribute to a truly special time in dive history charmed a lot of folks in the community. Now, Aquastar is back with the inevitable sequel, the fittingly named Deepstar II. If last year?s chrono was appealing but maybe a little too big, too complicated, or too expensive, the Deepstar II will definitely be worth a look. 
 

The Deepstar II has several obvious similarities to the Deepstar Chronograph from a design perspective. The things that have always made Aquastar distinctive are still present here: the squared off lugs and cushion style case, a ?no decompression? bezel, large applied hour markers at the cardinal positions, and an oversized ?big eye? subsidiary register, used on the Deepstar II to indicate running seconds (it was a minute totalizer on the chrono). The fact that there?s no new ground to speak of in the look of this watch feels very much intentional – there?s a funky language at work in the bones of Aquastar that?s intrinsic to the brand, and it would be truly strange for them to take a left turn into something more conventional. 
What sets the ...