Хиро́му Арака́ва (Hiromu Arakawa)

Hiromi Arakawa (荒川弘美), is a Japanese manga artist. She is best known as the author of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga, which became a hit both in Japan and internationally. She is also known for the manga adaptation of the short story The Tale of Arslan.

Japan. Hiromu grew up with three older sisters and a younger brother on her parents' farm. As a teenager, she helped her parents, and in her free time she played in the fields with her sisters. This is the reason why her manga so often depicts the countryside. As a child, Hiromu was a carefree child who dreamed of finding out what was outside the farms. Reading and collecting all genres of manga has always been one of her favorite hobbies; the influence of love for Kinnikuman manga led to the dream of an ideal mangaka. Interestingly, as a child, she loved to read the magazines Shonen Jump and Shonen Gangan, who later published her manga Gin no Saji.

run the family farm for 7 years if she could attend regular oil painting classes in the city. Hiromu later decided to move to Tokyo to continue her journey towards her dream of becoming a manga artist. Before leaving, she vowed to her parents that she would return home only when she could earn her own living through manga drawing. Her first work began with Doujins, which her friends helped her to complete, the next work, Juushin Enbu, she created with her friends Shishi and Zhang Fei Long. At the same time, Zhang became, according to Hiromu's idea, a prototype for one of the heroines of the manga[1][2].

manga "4-panel theater" (4koma), created for Gamest magazine, in which she depicted parodies of games. By the way, at that time the mangaka used the pseudonym Edmund Arakawa. She was later hired as an assistant to Hiroyuki Eto, the author of the famous manga Mahoujin Guru Guru[3]. Mangaka's own career began with the publication of the Stray Dog manga in Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine. This entry won a prize at the 9th 21st Century Shonen Gangan Awards[1].

manga, Shanghai Youma Kikai In July 2001, the first chapter of Fullmetal Alchemist was released in Monthly Shonen Gangan[5]. This manga made her famous: in 2004, Fullmetal Alchemist received the Shogakukan Publishing Award for the best work in the shonen category [6]. The release of the manga ended in 2010, two anime series and two full-length animated films were shot based on its plot.
In 2011, Nikkei Entertainment magazine published a ranking of the most commercially successful manga artists of our time. Arakawa ranked eighth in the ranking[7].

the beginning of the 20th century. In the anime and manga there are cars, trains, radio engineering, telephone communications, tanks, but there is no aviation, however, the technology of creating mechanical prostheses-auto-armor is developed, and at the same time, alchemy is widespread in this world as a natural science[8].

of Amestris, which is actually under martial law. On three sides it is surrounded by hostile states, with which Amestris is in a state of permanent war. And only in the east of the country is the desert, which reliably separates the country from the Xing Empire. In the middle of the Eastern Desert are the ruins of the once rich and prosperous ancient city of Xerxes, where alchemy originated many centuries ago. In the north of the country are the mountains of Briggs and the fortress of the same name, guarding the border between Amestris and the hostile empire of Drachma. The internal situation in the country is not entirely stable, especially in the East, where only five years before the events of the manga and anime, at the cost of enormous efforts, they managed to suppress the bloody uprising of the inhabitants of Ishwar. Because of this, the country is highly militarized, and the state structure resembles a totalitarian state. The real power is concentrated in the hands of the army.

Amestris flag