Hiromu Arakawa



Hiromu Arakawa is a female mangaka who rose into fame with her Magnum Opus Fullmetal Alchemist. Her most recent finished work is Silver Spoon, a Slice of Life manga focused on agricultural life, and as 2020 is working in the manga adaptation of The Heroic Legend of Arslan.


 * Stray Dog (1999)
 * Shanghai Yōmakikai (2000)
 * Fullmetal Alchemist (2001–2010)
 * Raiden 18 (2005)
 * Hero Tales (2006–2010)
 * Noble Farmer (2006–)
 * Silver Spoon (2011–2019)
 * The Heroic Legend of Arslan (2013–)


 * Author Appeal: Now memetic "Men should be buff! Women should be vavoom!"
 * Author Avatar: She occasionally appears as a bespectacled cow, as shown in the page picture.
 * Reclusive Artist: To a degree. It is really hard to find her image.
 * Shown Their Work: Fullmetal Alchemist shows that she did a lot of research on both alchemy (famous alchemists, theoretical alchemic laws, uses for Philosopher's Stone) and chemistry (human composition, conservation of matter). Any breaks from them seem to be either Rule Of Cool, Rule of Funny, or the alchemists in question knowing what they're doing (more so than can be shown with just a few images and some relatively small speech bubbles).
 * For the Wuxia inspired Hero Tales, Arakawa and her team travelled to where the series is set to see some Chinese architecture and way of living.
 * Write What You Know: Her manga Silver Spoon takes place in Hokkaido, where she was raised. Naturally, the depiction of the life there is very accurate.