Celebrating Female Manga Creators
Happy International Women’s Day!
To celebrate, I will share my love of some wonderful female manga creators! 😀
Let’s talk a little about Hiromu Arakawa, creator of my all-time favorite manga series Fullmetal Alchemist.
I can talk all day long on why I love Fullmetal Alchemist, from world-building, to the wide array of unique and memorable casts, to a very tight story development. That’s for another time. But today I want to focus on the creator.
When I first read Fullmetal Alchemist, I didn’t know Arawaka was female. She purposely used a gender neutral pen name. She even drew a cow as her icon - it was both an attribute to her family life (she grew up in a farm tending cows) and a way to hide her gender.
Why did she hide her gender? Fullmetal Alchemist was a shōnen manga – comic with adolescent boys as its target audiences. Historically, 99% of successful shōnen mangas were created by men.
Only one female creator broke this mold, and it happened in the early 1990s. Her name was Rumiko Takahashi. She wrote and illustrated several shōnen manga bestseller series, including Ranma ½ and Inuyasha.
To be a female creator for shōnen manga was so rare, when Arawaka was young, she became a big fan of Takahashi’s work. In fact, Takahashi’s success paved ways to the next generation of female creators in making shōnen manga. Furthermore, it signaled to publishers that women also have the capability to make bestselling series in this genre.
I have always enjoyed reading comics with tons of actions and martial art sequences. To be honest, there were times when I wondered if I could pull it off. Monkey King and the World of Myths includes action sequences that I have always wanted to draw, but a part of me always worried, as it’s not as common for female creators to do this.
But I did it anyway – because all these wonderful female manga creators whom I admire set an example for me that it’s totally doable, and their trailblazing stories gave me courage and confidence to journey on.
Here’s to all the sisters out there who are working hard in the world of comic creations: Sending tons of love and admiration!
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Note to educators and school librarians:
While The Monkey King and the World of Myths series is suitable for young readers due to its tamed action sequences, most of the mangas mentioned above consist of relatively violent contents, and they are not suitable for readers too young. However, they are great reads for older readers.
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Do you have any favorite female comic creators? Share in the comments below~!
Another woman mangaka I deeply respect, although she's less of a direct influence on me: Fumiyo Kouno, the creator of "In This Corner of the World."
When women break through male dominated fields I always think about their sheer courage! I’m glad you took a moment to recognize them and to share with us how they influenced you, too.