(SPOILERS) A new and dangerous theory concerning Sera and the mysterious girl!

[b-okiya]

About the eating etiquette thing… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_etiq ... ican_style

“In the American style, also called the zig-zag method or fork switching, the knife is initially held in the right hand and the fork in the left. Holding food to the plate with the fork tines-down, a single bite-sized piece is cut with the knife. The knife is then set down on the plate, the fork transferred from the left hand to the right hand, and the food is brought to the mouth for consumption.”

You're totally right. This is why I wrote "when the food is brought up to the mouth". I mean in that moment they'll be holding the fork with the right hand. If you look at Sera, she's chewing (just had a piece of food) and she is holding both, the knife in the right. If it's American, the knife will be put down at that moment. So it's more of a European style.

[The_evilbit]

American here, maybe I am just uncivilized, but most folk I know we use our dominate hand for the fork/knife combo. It could also be the times are changing with the younger generation, I know growing up I was taught left hand fork, right hand knife. I use my dominate hand though for dining now.

[Jd-]

It's definitely possible that Gosho is using this perceived discrepancy (nice catch!). However, as an American, I can't say I see many people adhering to this. Most people just do what's comfortable and no one says anything, which is exactly as it should be. I'm always cutting with my dominant hand and then raising whatever I've cut to eat with the fork in my other hand without going through the trouble of placing the fork down and such. That seems way overly complicated and unnecessary, and definitely not something I see modern Americans doing (certainly no one I dine with on a frequent basis).

In a wider sense, I'm always skeptical about the purveyance of these sorts of practices. Maybe it's out of having basically no respect for any sort of traditional practices (especially concerning food and dining), but any time I've ever read "This is the American way of doing things" it seems really overblown and not really reflective of reality. I've always found "we must do it this way because this is how our people do it!" to be not only pretentious and primarily serving as a means of asserting influence over others, but also really hollow in application.

Being left-handed, I do basically everything the opposite of what proper "etiquette" allows. Virtually any practice that suggests "This is the only way to do this" is usually baseless and entirely rooted in tradition more so than relying on any practical, empirically efficient basis. Honestly, I don't care what anyone is doing with their food or how they are consuming it so long as they aren't getting it all over themselves. Hold your fork upside down; place your chopsticks wherever in the food you want; use either hand, use both hands. The absolute last thing that anyone should ever worry about is which hand someone is using to hold a fork or knife. I don't care what positions the forks and spoons and knives are placed on the table, or how many there are, or if you should be using the small spoon or the slightly smaller spoon for your soup "just because". Just eat.

In short, so long as someone's not making a mess, enforcing dining "etiquette" is grandiloquent nonsense used as a means of asserting dominance over those they feel are not as "refined". People should eat as they see fit and as they find most comfortable--not strictly adhere to social cues that result in inconvenience and being forced to conform to a preconceived notion of diligence that, in all likelihood, has absolutely no bearing on anything other than one's ego.

...Ahem. Now back to the topic.

[Azuregold]

And then there are people like me, who are mixed-handed and do some things better with their left hand and some things with their right. My fork is always left and knife is always right, not because of "etiquette" or convenience or whatever, but because that's just what feels natural to me. I can't use a fork with my right or knife with my left (well, I could, but it would work about as well as writing with my off hand).

(Actually, every time there's a case and Conan/whoever excludes someone from the suspect list just because they're using a different hand than the killer did for something, it frustrates me a bit. I write left-handed, but would swing a baseball bat with my right, for example. Gosho seems fond of using interesting or obscure facts in cases, so I would love for this to show up sometime.)

[Wakarimashita]

And then there are people like me, who are mixed-handed and do some things better with their left hand and some things with their right. My fork is always left and knife is always right, not because of "etiquette" or convenience or whatever, but because that's just what feels natural to me. I can't use a fork with my right or knife with my left (well, I could, but it would work about as well as writing with my off hand).

Same. I'm left handed when it comes to writing but everything else I do as a right handed person.

[Jd-]

(Actually, every time there's a case and Conan/whoever excludes someone from the suspect list just because they're using a different hand than the killer did for something, it frustrates me a bit. I write left-handed, but would swing a baseball bat with my right, for example. Gosho seems fond of using interesting or obscure facts in cases, so I would love for this to show up sometime.)

Wow, that's interesting--it's exactly the same for me, down to that very example.

[Jecka]

(Actually, every time there's a case and Conan/whoever excludes someone from the suspect list just because they're using a different hand than the killer did for something, it frustrates me a bit. I write left-handed, but would swing a baseball bat with my right, for example. Gosho seems fond of using interesting or obscure facts in cases, so I would love for this to show up sometime.)

Wow, that's interesting--it's exactly the same for me, down to that very example.

My friend was like that too. Wrote and drew left-handed, but everything else right-handed.

[lpf]

The knife and fork etiquette is primarily an upper-class code rather than a general practice. It wouldn't matter in normal circumstances, but since Sonoko does say "as expected of someone returning from America" and makes a small mistake, I would not be surprised if the author was indeed playing with the difference between American and European style. The other discrepancies that your friend noticed are very interesting; the part about lying as to going to America as opposed to Britain seems to hold water. As for the implications of that lie (being related to Ai's family), it's less clear.

[Utsune]

Yes I think I quite agree with you! About the football/soccer thing, the Japanese follow the American way of calling the sport "soccer" (サッカー) so it's definitely strange she specifically says "football" whether it was said in the Japanese way or not. Although I *think* European style is knife-right fork-left (which is generally the case here in the UK, since more or less all our eating knives are made to be held by the right hand,) I have yet to reread the chapter (what chapter is it btw?) to give more thoughts on this. (EDIT: Sorry, read your post wrong, thought you said European does it Knife-left Fork-right Ignore this.) Finally, I also think Elena and Sera's mom may be related but it's just pure speculation on my part.

I have a feeling she could be shrunk. In addition to the theories that are flying around, Sera's dialogues are in past tense when she talks about her mom's chest size. Not sure if anyone has talked about this yet so I'll link you to my original posts from the other forum regarding this:
http://www.detectiveconanworld.com/foru ... /?p=317098
http://www.detectiveconanworld.com/foru ... /?p=317130

I didn't really get any feedback there, I'm sharing this here so maybe we could generate more ideas from these clues!

[James Moriarty]

European here and I can confirm the way of holding fork and knife, too.
Quite interesting theory. As for the cover pictures and the UK flags in them. Did Gosho hint at plot related thing with the cover pictures before? Never noticed.

Additional (useless - maybe neat) information:

German
Gabel (fork) => left
Messer (knife) => right

[kholoudsafir]

I think that the strongest point is football/soccer, will wait for confirmation from the translators, but it wont necessary mean that she was lying about living in America, it just might mean that her carer is/was British, because sometimes you speak your carers delicate/accent even though you live in a different country/place

[Patrick]

(Actually, every time there's a case and Conan/whoever excludes someone from the suspect list just because they're using a different hand than the killer did for something, it frustrates me a bit. I write left-handed, but would swing a baseball bat with my right, for example. Gosho seems fond of using interesting or obscure facts in cases, so I would love for this to show up sometime.)

I had a professor who, on the blackboard, wrote with his left hand but used his right when he needed to draw something. So there's that xD
As a European I have always used my right to hold the knife and cut, whilst the left holded the food with the fork. However, I've always found this the easy way to do it since I'm right handed and my skilled hand is doing the cutting while the other holds still. I guess if I happened to be left handed I would do otherwise regardless of what custom says.

[dogfish44]

UK, agreeing that we'd hold utensils with the knife in the dominant hand, and the fork in the other, and we would generally refer to the idea of switching hands as being the American style. I'd also personally call it inefficient

Anyway, if Sera is British then this could actually be very promising. It also adds another cluster of law-enforcement/intelligence to the potential mix attacking the BO, MI6.

I'm curious as to where 2 Mothers being Sisters has come from - is this an interview I've managed to miss

FishEdit: Danke

[User 4869]

Excuse me to intrude, but can someone tell me where I can find the interview where Gosho said that two mothers were actually sisters please ?

First link for summary, second link for actual text. They're in the same page anyway. (Look in the spoiler box in both cases)
http://www.detectiveconanworld.com/foru ... ntry316495
http://www.detectiveconanworld.com/foru ... ntry316639

[Detective Doroshi]

Spoiler:

What is sure is that the mysterious girl must be someone (mature enough) who has been the victim of APTX4869, because of the extraordinary intelligence of that child! About her, being the mother of Sera wouldn't be impossible at all. Something about her tells me that the middle brother of Akai and Sera could probably have light hair like this child (who's 100% a member of the family of Akai) Though I still don't understand why Masumi and Shuuichi have different surnames. It may be possible that their mother married twice.

But it would be horrible if Sera's and Akai's mother was somewhat the relative or sister of Elena!! It would mean that Akai fell in love with his own cousin!!!!!