in the beginning » arakawa hiromu

Arakawa Hiromu was born on May 8th, 1973 in Hokkaido (Japan). She was brought up at a farm in the countryside, which probably inspired her cow avatar as well as her "equivalent exchange" theory for her most famous series to date, Fullmetal Alchemist.

Her first work was a one-shot called STRAY DOG, which won the first prize in the 21st Century "Shounen Gangan" 9th Awards. In August 1999, this same work debuted in Gangan. Her next works were Totsugeki Tonari no Enikkusu and Shanghai Youma Kikai, both of them one-shots and published in Gangan during the year 2000.

Then, in 2001 (in the August issue of Gangan), the first chapter of Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was published, which would become her defining manga work (at least for now). In 2005, in the August edition of Monthly Sunday GX, she released the first chapter of a new series titled RAIDEN-18 as a colaboration for this magazine's 5th anniversary. A second chapter was released at the beginning of 2006. Around this time she also published another short story by the name of Souten no Koumori.

In March 2006, Arakawa released a new Shanghai Youma Kikai chapter, six years after the first one. It's supposed to be an continuation to the story from the drama CD based on the series that was to be released also in March.

Ever since that same year Arakawa is also involved in another action-adventure manga series called Juushin Enbu (Hero Tales). She is in charge of illustrating and takes part in the planning of the story. Published in Gangan Powered at first, it then moved to Shounen Gangan. Though it's still on-going, it's supposed to end in its fifth volume.

Arakawa is, moreover, working in one more current manga series. Hyakushou Kizoku is an autobiographical work that explores life in a farm from the author's perspective. After starting its serialisation in the magazine Unpoko, it ended up moving to Wings. So far one volume has been released. Gifted with an amazing talent and even more potential, I'm sure Arakawa will continue to delight us with her works for years to come.