Hiromu Arakawa
Early years

Hiromu Arakawa was born in Tokachi, a sub-prefecture of Hokkaido. In that pictorial environment she grew accompanied by three sisters and a brother. She is the second youngest in the pack.

Popular for its dairy products, Hokkaido breeds many jobs in the agriculture industry. There are Hokkaido farmer families who for generations make their living out of animal and plant cultivation. Arakawa's is one of them.

In her youth, the manga artist was on course to continue the family tradition and tie her life to the industry. She spent a lot of childhood helping with chores and learning the basics of the trade. She attended agriculture high school, after which she started working on the diary and potato farm of her parents.

That job she enjoyed and appreciated, but her mind was set on other things. As far as the artist remembers having a pencil in hand, she drew. Even though her surrounding didn't open any career paths outside her profession, she kept dreaming. And for her, being a manga artist was indeed a dream job.

Her first professional steps in this direction were rather shy: oil painting classes, just once per month. But in her free time, she kept slowly perfecting her craft.

During that period, Hiromu created her first manga - an Annals of the Three Kingdoms doujin. First work, and it already revealed her love for history, and especially for the Chinese one. Her second work was drawing yonkomas for a magazine about horse racing. During that period, she and her friends formed a small manga club.

Tied by a promise she made to her parents that for seven years she will work on the farm, she engaged in these types of minor manga flirtations and planned big for when that period expires.

In 1999, her obligation ended and she quickly relocated to Tokyo to try and find a job as a mangaka.

The artist's first months in Tokyo saw her forming a doujin group named Dennou Sanzoku Bukand, together with her friends. Her first paid job was at the Gamest magazine. This classic publication was centered around video games, but all of their front covers were either drawn, or CGI, and inside there were always plenty of drawn elements as well.

Hiromu's input there were yonkomas, in which she made fun of games that were being freshly released and talked about. Her female identity was already hidden at the time, and so she made them under the artistic nickname "Edmund Arakawa".

First minor recognition came when the mangaka made Shishi Juushin Enbu, a net novel which was well-received by people who had the pleasure of coming in contact with it, and quickly transitioned into another format, being released as a doujinshi. It was a joint effort, together with her friend Zhang Fei Long. The two worked under the Dennou Sanzoku Bukando banner, with Arakawa mainly doing character design. Some elements of this manga laid the foundation of Arakawa's later work Hero Tales.

On top of making her own strips, she assisted Hiroyuki Etō for a short period of time, helping in development of the Mahoujin Guru Guru manga. Etō is mostly known for Mahōjin Guru Guru, a manga half-dressed as a jRPG video game, making fun of popular elements of that genre.

The Gamest job centering around the same subject enabled her to land a gig as Hiroyuki's assistant. It was the first time when she had the privilege of seeing a professional mangaka at work, and helped hone her skills and prepare her for the busy future.

In 1999, Enix's magazine Monthly Shonen Gangan (which had recently published Hiroyuki Etō's manga Magical Circle Guru Guru) offered to print Arakawa's one-shot.

Titled Stray Dog, the 40-page manga tells a story of Fultac, a shady criminal that befriends Kika, a military dog. Kika is the artificial cross between dog and human. One of many, as those are massively produced in the nearby laboratory slash factory for the purposes of humans.

Tied to their masters, these creatures do everything they are ordered to and ask for nothing in return, which makes them perfect servants. Seeing caged Kika, a clueless, harmless and innocent being, Fultac takes pity on him and lets the creature make a pact of ownership and join him in his journeys.

Judging it as a one-shot, it is a good and entertaining read, but taking into account that it's her first published major work, it is actually impressive! The drawings are neither good nor shameful, but the mood is consistent. The manga's biggest strength lies in its story though.

The main character is not black-and-white. Despite him being an obvious bad guy, he has a good side to him, and the story provides an explanation which ties things up and explains his actions.

It is notoriously hard to engage the reader in a one-shot, as the short format makes things end before there is time for the reader to familiarize and identify himself with characters and immerse in the alternate reality. Here, the story is nicely condensed, the whole thing seems rich enough and satisfying in the end.

There is also enough freshness to keep things from being predictable - like the way Bartley's dog behaves when he gets to choose.

On the other end, the two main characters remind Guts and Puck from Berserk, but the content is brought down age-wise from seinen to shonen (see sidenote). No internal demon organs flying around.

Hiromu is so good at evoking the average teenage boy imagery that it's hard to believe that Stray Dog was actually made by a woman, and not a man who in his childhood used to run around with plastic sword and cut imaginary enemies in half. However, there is a definite female touch to it as well that intensifies as the story unfolds. The male and female vibes are balanced enough on the manly side that the average shonen reader won't mind.

There are some similarities to Fullmetal, although nothing that was directly translated to her most popular work. Artificially bred species with combat usefulness in mind is one thing. The concept of dog of the military is another. It portrays heartless militaristic ambitions ready to sacrifice lives for the sake of battleground domination over rivals.

Soldiers (particularly in the U.S. army) are often called dogs and they are trained to behave like dogs, in a way. Boundless obedience devoid of critical thinking is every military commander's perfect soldier. The concept of dog as a tool of the military, which stars in both Stray Dog and Fullmetal Alchemist, where Ed is frequently presented as dog of the military, is an obvious reference to it.

Arakawa also referred to this one-shot in FMA by naming one brand of alcohol 'Stray Dog'. Characters in the latter manga drink it on numerous occasions.

The one-shot was very well-received by readers and fan letters praising the work started coming in by the dozen. On top of that, it already earned Hiromu a first award - the ninth 21st Century Shōnen Gangan Award.

For a beginning artist, to have her first written work published, popular and recognized with an award is a dream come true that ridiculously small fraction of mangakas experience.

Not to take anything away from Stray Dog, but there are thousands of very talented artists that fail to gain recognition every year. To have such a wonderful career start that Hiromu had requires both great talent and lots of luck. She clearly has both.

Impressed by her work and realizing that they may have a golden goose at hand, Enix (soon to be Square Enix) offered Arakawa a contract, giving her an opportunity to spread her wings. And so all the pieces continued to fall into place for the aspiring mangaka.

The first work under a new Enix contract came in 2000 and was titled Totsugeki Tonari no Enikksu. Standing in sharp contrast with Stray Dog and instead borrowing from her earlier works, it is a quasi-biographical manga that describes Hiromu's work for Hiroyuki Etō on Mahoujin Guru Guru.

It was an interesting move from Arakawa. She just arrived on the scene with a shonen piece. In such situations, natural instinct is to try and create something similar, but of higher quality. It is a sure way to keep current fans interested and probably gain new ones. Instead, she took a step back thematically.

Enix proved that they have a healthy distance to themselves, as instead of pushing the artist to create more of what worked best, they published a work which makes fun of another Monthly Shōnen Gangan manga.

Also worth noting is that it is Hiromu's first serialized work. From writing small comic strips and assisting she went to composing a one-shot, and now she had her first continuous publication. She never abandoned making short strips entirely though, often materializing some wild ideas in that format and putting them in her mangas.

Even though luck was on Hiromu's side, the artist was afraid of the future. She still didn't know if she has what's necessary to succeed in the manga world. Feeling that she needs to polish everything to perfection, she invested a lot of energy into making sure she pushes her limit with the next creation.

Instead of doing a typical shonen, or taking a strictly humorous approach, she did something in between, and then some. Combining a plethora of different thematic elements into one work, the idea was to include many popular things, so there is something for everyone.

The main character is Jack, an uber-powerful monster disguised as human that works for Demon Taoists Corporation. The action takes place in Shanghai, where demons are free to roam at will due to humans being awfully underpowered in comparison and unable to fight back.

And here's where the company comes in - run by a staff of beasts that morally sit closer to humanity than to their breed, so they decide to disguise themselves as humans and provide the last line of defence.

Jack's female partner is really more of a sidekick, mainly assisting him through her supernatural skill - a vision that penetrates walls. Their boss is Golden Nine-Tails, a scary woman who runs her ship tightly, executing perfect discipline to keep her employees in check. Even this doesn't stop them from completely demolishing every place they battle their enemies in.

The manga really takes in many influences. The Chinese setting brings taoism (present in name only), general Guan Yu as God of Business and even king Sun Wukong. A vampire makes an appearance, too. Jack, the main character, is really the historic London killer Jack the Ripper. The resemblance to a psychopath is only in the fact that he is also a monster, but he is one in body only, whereas the real-world Jack the Ripper was one psychologically.

Another similarity is much more obvious - Hellboy! Just like Mike Mignola's character, Jack also fights monsters, despite being one himself. He also has to shield himself from humanity, probably afraid that we wouldn't take kindly if we'd found out that he is "one of them".

His basic form is that of a human, so Jack just makes sure that no outsider is present during his battles, where his superhuman abilities betray him. Also just like Hellboy, he has one super-powerful hand that's his biggest asset. This taoist demon is left-handed though.

Even more can be said about the similarities between Demons of Shanghai and Fullmetal Alchemist.

Just as the style develops as a mangaka gets more experience and his/her drawings become more sophisticated, so do characters and themes evolve and are often similar to each other across the author's works. Hiromu Arakawa's portfolio has many examples of that.

Here, the main protagonist Jack looks and acts a lot like Lieutenant Havoc, Mr. Dandy has a glorious glamour that makes his chin proudly put forward just like Major Alex Louis Armstrong does. Golden Nine-Tails has the same cold and strong personality that Izumi Curtis has, and looks just like her too, except for the hair. Su-An, a humble and energetic assistant that joins the company to do the paperwork looks a bit like May Chang when arriving at the agency's doorsteps.

Demons of Shanghai is written in a very cinematic way and it would be a blast for someone to adapt it to an anime format. Arakawa knows how to accent scenes, gradually build tension, when to start and when to end scenes, how to cut dialogues to make them sound cool. This is Hiromu's first work where her great artistic sensitivity in many areas comes through.

Of course she wouldn't be herself without inserting her trademark humor into the manga. Here, it actually takes the center stage. Yes, the story could very well be material for a Van Helsing movie, but outside of battle, there is a silly undertone to everything.

Not surprisingly, her sense of humor is great here as well. Everything is nicely-balanced and jokes don't take away from fight scene epicness. A little reminder of her video game past has found its way to page 19 of the first chapter - critical attack!

Just like all of her previous works, this one was also met with warm reception. Enix was happy, but even in their wildest dreams, they had no idea about what's coming up next.