Hiromu Arakawa is a Japanese manga artist from Hokkaido, she was born on May 8, 1973. Arakawa was raised on a dairy farm with three elder sisters and a younger brother. She thought about being a manga artist “since she was little”. 

 

Arakawa moved to Tokyo in the summer of 1999, and started her career in the manga industry as an assistant to Hiroyuki Etō, author of Mahōjin Guru Guru. Her own career began with the publication of Stray Dog in Square Enix's Monthly Shōnen Gangan in 1999. Stray Dog won the ninth 21st Century "Shōnen Gangan" Award. She published one chapter of Shanghai Yōmakikaiin Monthly Shōnen Gangan in 2000. In July 2001, Arakawa published the first chapter of Fullmetal Alchemist in Monthly Shōnen Gangan. The series spanned 108 chapters, with the last one published in July 2010, and the series was collected in twenty-seven volumes. When the studio Bones adapted it into an anime series, Arakawa assisted them in its early development. However, she was not involved in the making of the script, so the anime had a different ending from the manga, which she developed further. The series won the 49th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category in 2004. When the second anime adaptation was reaching its ending, Arakawa showed director Yasuhiro Irie her plans for the manga's ending, making both end in near dates.

 

She is currently living in Tokyo and has published three more works, Raiden 18, Sōten no Kōmori, and Hero Tales. Arakawa has collaborated with the creation of Hero Tales with Studio Flag under the name of Huang Jin Zhou. In the anime adaptation of the series, Arakawa was responsible for the character designs. She has also drawn the cover from the Japanese edition of the novel The Demon's Lexicon authored by Sarah Rees Brennan. In April 2011, Arakawa began a new series called Silver Spoon in Shogakukan's Weekly Shōnen Sunday. Rather than writing another fantasy series like Fullmetal Alchemist, Arakawa wanted to challenge herself by trying a more realistic story with Silver Spoon. It quickly rose among Shogakukan's best-selling titles and an anime series by A-1 Pictures began airing in July 2013. Also in July 2013 she began her manga adaptation of Yoshiki Tanaka's The Heroic Legend of Arslan series of novels in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine.