The artist's true name is Hiromi (just like popular fusion pianist Hiromi Uehara). There is no such name as Hiromu. The artist chose it as her pen name to hide her sex. Even though 'Hiromi' is a unisex name, she assumed that most readers will think that woman is behind the manga - female Japanese names often end with 'i' while male ones tend to end with 'u'. Scared that this might discourage male readers she mainly addresses with her shonen works, she replaced the 'u' with the 'i' at the end of her pen name.
Arakawa's single biggest professional influence is Suiho Tagawa, the author of Norakuro. In her own words: "He is the root of my style as an artist". Other influences include Rumiko Takahashi, Shigeru Mizuki and Mike Mignola (the only non-Japanese on the list, the author of the Hellboy graphic novel). As for most influential mangas, it's Dragon Ball and Fist of the North Star.
When still a young girl, Hiromu's favorite manga was Kinnikuman, a work written by Yudetamago (which is a collective of Yoshinori Nakai and Takashi Shimada).
Admits to reading all popular types of manga.
Arakawa has only ever had one known assistant and that's Yudetamago, who later became a mangaka on her own, earning many fans through her wonderful Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari manga. Rumor has it that Inariya Fusanosuke was another past assistant, but that information has never been confirmed.
She is a great friend with another manga artist Akira Segami (Kamigurai, Kagetora).
In line with the farmer profession, the Arakawa family motto is: those who don’t work, don’t deserve to eat.
Being surrounded by strong women who are never shying away from hard work served as an inspiration for her manga stories - she put the same kinds of characters in there! Just as she considered women underpowered in the manga world (and needing male-sounding pseudonyms to break through), in her works sex was under scrutiny as well. Often feeling that she could bring in more female characters, she looked for opportunities to introduce them.
As all mangakas, she is also expected to meet the demands of publishers, but both writing story and drawing the manga gives her a lot of control over her creations.
Huge fan of the Star Wars franchise, she even once considered buying a big Darth Vader figure. Also in love with the Indiana Jones series.
The artist is fascinated with Chinese culture and sneaks in its elements into her works. The most obvious of them is the Xing civilization in Full Metal Alchemist, but there are many more. Demons of Shanghai even has the influence telegraphed in the title.
Just like so many other manga artists, she also puts herself in her works. Hiromu's alter-ego avatar is a cow with glasses on. To this day, she regrets that she introduced that character wearing "fighting panties" in the first volume of FMA.
Afraid of bears.
Japanese are known to be super-hard workers and Arakawa is no exception. When in 2007 she gave birth to her first child, she didn't even take a single day off from work. During the most busy period of her life, she was able to draw more than 50 pages per month, and fulfill other manga/anime/video game obligations at the same time!
When asked which of the characters she created reminds her the most, she always names Alphonse Elric.
Capitalizing on a huge Fullmetal Alchemist craze in Japan, their local Universal Studios office made an exception and built an FMA attraction in 2005 in Osaka's Universal park - the only one at the time not based on a franchise not belonging to Universal. The attraction depicted a fighting scene between alchemists and homunculi.
Her favorite food is ramen.
Just like many other popular mangakas, Hiromu guards her privacy so much that there is not a single picture of her on the internet. Romi Paku, Edward Elric's voice actress, is very often confused with Arakawa and in many of the mangaka's biographies you will find Paku's face mistakenly presented as Arakawa's. The confusion probably comes from the fact that on multiple occasions Romi accepted awards in Hiromu's name.
Blood type: A
Fullmetal Alchemist was developed dynamically - the author often had to change some things which she planned for earlier, because her characters had the lives of their own and developed in ways that would make them behave in a different way than she had previously expected.
Because the actress playing Lan Fan couldn't participate in making of the last FMA anime episode, Lan Fan character's fate was concluded in the last manga chapter, but omitted from the anime conclusion.
Homunculus is a term taken from alchemy, originating from a well-regarded alchemist Paracelsus, who gave instructions how to create him. In alchemical terms, it was a small person conceived outside of woman's womb. Many alchemists were obsessed with artificial creation of humans, and by their definitions things like synthetic creation of entire genome which is tested in science right now classifies as creating homunculi. One day, we might actually live among homunculi!
Arakawa was born in 1973, which was the year of the ox. Her zodiac sign is taurus. Her entire youth she dealt with cows. Putting those three together, one stops wondering why she has chosen a cow as manga representation of herself.
