I recently chanced on a listing for a rather obscure Mitsubishi mechanical pencil, which the seller described as a ‘prototype’. Called the “MITSU-BISHI Orena–.5”, the use of a dash before the lead size made me think it could be an import by Yasutomo, the folks who brought in the Mitsubishi Holder 305, aka DEMI–.5 series.
To be honest, I wasn’t all that taken by the design, but the name… the NAME really hooked me. Why? Because ‘Orena’ shared some etymological roots with 2 other modern day ‘gimmick’ MPs: the Platinum OLEeNu from 2009, and Pentel’s Orenz series from 2014. To be sure, I’m not 100% clear about the story behind ‘Orenz’ — something about the pencil being a creative lens? But I personally believe that ‘Ore’ and ‘Ole…’ are drawn from the Japanese word '折れ’、meaning ‘break’. And thus, ‘unbreakable’ would be ‘折れない’ / Ore-nai.
In this close-up, you can see that the Mitsubishi used the whole of the ‘cone’ as a slider support for the lead, which, I found to my surprise, sits in a resin plug instead of a mechanical clutch. It was nerve wrecking removing the fragile plastic shroud to insert the very short piece of ancient 0.5mm lead!
As for the Platinum, ‘OLEeNu’ was a progression from their previous flagship ZeroShin double-clutch series. OLEeNu would somewhat retain that lead-saving function by implementing a spring cushioned supporting sleeve between the tip and the clutch. Pentel, of course, revived the classic solution of a precision machined sliding sleeve as the means to effectively use 0.2mm leads.
Although I have first-gen OLEeNu and Orenz pencils, I decided to pick the darkest / most serious looking ones for this gathering of Ore-kin. The mostly plastic OLEeNu+ MOLS-450 came out in 2016 and was put out to pasture in 2022, while the v2 Orenz Metal Grip 0.2mm came out in 2020.
As far I have been able to research, Yasutomo first partnered Mitsubishi in 1966. So the Orena could have been pre-DEMI given its lack of an actual working clutch.