Hiromu Arakawa (荒川弘) is the creator of the Fullmetal Alchemist series in Japan. She's a private woman who prefers to illustrate herself as a cow wearing glasses in her manga series. This is partly becasue she is from a farming area of Hokkaido, Japan that specialized in dairy. Arakawa would later incorporate some of the experiences and knowledge from her youth into her next work, Gin no Saji.

One of Hiromu Arakawa's most defining characteristics is her habit of going to book stores and purchasing a variety of random books from used book stores. In the omake pages of Fullmetal Alchemist Vol. 21, Arakawa illustrated a short comic telling the story of how a book store cashier figured out her identity by just her last name and the assortment of books she had bought.

Her most well-known works include:

• Hagane no Renkinjutsushi (better known as Fullmetal Alchemist)
• Gin no Saji
• Arslan Senki (an adaptation of the Arslan series by Yoshiki Tanaka)
• Yomi no Tsugai