Miki Yoshikawa
Style and influence. At Anime Expo 2015, Yoshikawa said that she was inspired by "Dragon Ball", and would try to copy some of Akira Toriyama's panels and manuscripts. She credits Hiro Mashima for "teaching her everything I know" while she was assisting him on "Fairy Tail". Yoshikawa worked as a manga assistant under Mashima for about four years. In the "Natalie" interview, Yoshikawa said that she had thought of the body swapping idea in the "Yankee-kun" days, and had researched some medical books on the differences between men and women, both physically and emotionally, but generally  went with it because she liked the idea. "It just kind of came to me, but I was wondering how a guy finding himself in a girl's body would react, and the reverse". She treats a body-swapped character as an entirely different character. When it was noted that the main characters for both of her works were delinquents, Yoshikawa replied that those types of characters came easily for her, as she grew up in the lower end of Tokyo. The characters and their names are not based on her friends so that they can act crazy. At Anime  Expo 2015, she said that the characters reflect different aspects of herself. With regards to drawing in "Yamada-kun", she tries to vary each kiss, but mostly uses the side angle to make sure it comes through. With regards to kisses between members of the same gender, she replied that wasn't intended to target any specific demographic but just "an inevitable outcome." At the time of Anime Expo, she said she had five assistants. She does her drawing by hand in black-and-white, and uses the computer for the filling in colors. She spends about half of her  time on story, and the other half on actual drawing.