WALKSCAPE
Crosswave EditionSorajiro, the Yellow Face of Nippon TV’s Weather Forecast
2025-12-22
On Nippon TV’s weather coverage, a round yellow figure with a red crest stands beside the presenter. His name is Sorajiro (そらジロー), and the network introduced him in 2007. For many viewers, he is easiest to place beside forecaster Minoru Kihara on the weekday evening news program news every.
A weather segment is designed to deliver practical information quickly. Sorajiro gives it something else the audience can recognize immediately: a recurring character with his own physical presence in the frame.
A character beside the weather map
Japanese broadcasters have used mascots for news, variety shows and station promotions for years. With Sorajiro, Nippon TV gave a routine piece of service journalism a character viewers could follow from one forecast to the next.
The forecast still comes from the meteorologist. Sorajiro can answer in movement, turning or hopping where a presenter would use another sentence. That puts a familiar shape beside new information.
For someone glancing at a television across a room, seeing the character can make it easier to recognize the moment in the program when the weather is about to come on.
A shape you can recognize from across the room
The yellow body, wide eyes and red crest are easy to draw from memory. There is enough of an animal in the shape to make it friendly and enough ambiguity to let viewers decide what they are looking at.
A costume also moves differently from a graphic. A small pause or an awkward turn can give a character a timing of its own. Repeating those gestures over time is part of how Sorajiro became a presence viewers could recognize without an introduction.
The same visual language works in a studio, outdoors and in the margins of a sign for the program.
A place in the broadcast day
Nippon TV lists Sorajiro across several programs, including morning appearances and the weekday evening news. That range lets the same image take on different jobs, from a quick signal in a busy morning to a familiar presence after school.
Seeing the same figure at a recurring point in a program gives viewers a way to recognize where they are in the broadcast. That familiarity is an important part of how a character can belong to the channel.
What happens outside the weather segment
Sorajiro has turned up in animation, goods and events. For the character’s tenth anniversary, Nippon TV worked with the United Nations Environment Programme on programming and activities about the environment.
The event gave children something to make and do as well as something to watch. It is a concrete example of the relationship a familiar character can help a broadcaster take outside the studio.
The value of a familiar cue
People can get a forecast in a few seconds from a phone. A broadcast still has room for a presenter, a live space and someone the audience has come to expect to see beside them.
It takes consistency to make that work. A recognizable figure appearing in the same kind of place, doing the same modest job well, can come to feel like part of the day.
What the yellow figure brings to the screen
Sorajiro can make it easier to notice the forecast while leaving the forecast itself to the people trained to give it. The friendliness comes from the way the segment is presented.
Tomorrow the weather will be different, and the face beside the presenter will be familiar. That is the arrangement that gives the character room to last.