Characters as Society: Yugi Yamada

One of my favorite mangaka (an artist who writes the manga' story and draws its characters) is Yugi Yamada. One reason I like her so much is that the characters come across as real, fleshy, non-abstract. 

Another reason I like Yamada so much is that she gives her characters friends and neighbors and co-workers, who are all different types with differing personalities. That is, they are not all students or all rivals or all co-workers. One series supplies a married couple with a baby; friends who are thinking about dating; friends who are already dating and even an ex-member of the group. 

Moreover, her characters tend to interrelate, so that one character in one manga may make an appearance in another. 

What Yamada does here is quite difficult. So often, "extras" in manga or books or even movies can become confusing or so similar, they simply blur together. I have often started books where the sheer volume of names being thrown at me results in me putting the book down. 

Yamada's triumph is that her social worlds, like her characters, feel real and fleshy, and yet the main story doesn't get lost. Readers see that world through a central conflict/arc. The world was created for the characters, not the other way around. 

 Yamada's characters have full lives, which is quite attractive.