Yumiko Igarashi at Japan Expo

Yumiko Igarashi was the Manga guest of honor of Japan Expo 2011, a festival for Japanese culture and entertainment that takes place in Paris every summer. She was there from June 30 2011 to July 3rd 2011. By coincidence, I was in Paris on July 2nd so I decided to go there. She was giving autographs in the morning but when I was there they had already taken enough people for the morning session and to have autographs in the afternoon there was a draw system and I couldn't win. I felt tears well up in my eyes like a child. But my dear sister and my friend made everything to help me to see her even from afar and after waiting for a while, she appeared just when we decided to leave and we tried to take a photo. She had a big smile on her face.

Some kind fans who had autographs let me take a picture of them. They also said she was very kind.

Then we saw the exhibition dedicated to Igarashi.

There were many pictures of her series, Mayme Angel, Ann wa Ann and many others.

I especially loved the illustrations she made for some fairy tales. Here are the Igarashi versions of Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty and Princess Kaguya, the main character of one of the oldest Japanese folktales :

There were not a lot of pictures from Candy Candy, but there was a whole glass case full of Candy Candy objects.

Before the festival, there was a fanart contest and they also showed all the fanarts in the festival. I've sent a fanart too, but I guess it didn't respect all the rules as I didn't see it (watercolor was not allowed but I wasn't sure if gouache was allowed or not...)

The next day, there was a conference session. Unfortunately, I couldn't go but read the details on the net. Here are some informations from the answers she gave in the conference :

• she was inspired especially from American novels for Candy
• for her shojo mangas, she was inspired by Osamu Tezuka's works (especially Astro Boy and Ribbon no kishi)
• she didn't give an exact answer to the questions about her problems with Mizuki and she said that people thought the DVDs are not on sale because of those problems but in fact it was due to copyright problems and laws in Japan
• she participated in Candy Candy and Lady Georgie's animes only in the beginning to draw the characters. She knew that the manga and the anime would be different from the beginning and was happy to see the anime versions.
• she doesn't think that she'll continue Candy's story as now she is an adult and they can't do a story for children with an adult character

Finally, she drew in front of the fans Josephine, one of Napoleon's wifes, who will be the main character of her next manga. We'll see if she will have as many fans as Candy or Georgie...