It might be a bit confusing, but the answer is simple.
Summary:
- A number of fans thought Thistle was a woman.
- He is a male elven mage.
- It might have something to do with him being an elf.
Delicious in Dungeon (Dungeon Meshi) features a lot of fascinating characters. To be honest, there’s something appealing about each of them. And sometimes their appeal comes from a mystery, and Thistle is the best example of that.
Thistle is an elven mage and one of the series’ antagonists. This character appeared out of nowhere and caused complete chaos by doing some voodoo magic with Falin and turning her into a monster.
Although there are a lot of mysteries surrounding Thistle, there’s a very peculiar one that confuses fans: the character’s gender.
He’s Just a Feminine Man
If you’re here for a short answer, here it is: Thistle is a man. And this truth puzzled a number of viewers. If you saw a picture of Thistle and didn’t know who that was, it would be very easy to think he was a woman.
Not to drop gender stereotypes on you, but it’s true that everything about Thistle’s character design screams “female.” His face is more feminine than the faces of Laios or Senshi, for example, his outfit would also suit a girl pretty well, and fans have noticed Thistle wears a top in Daydream Hour, a series of short art books illustrated by Ryoko Kui, the author of Delicious in Dungeon.
Some fans think that the author couldn’t decide what gender Thistle should be and went back and forth between male and female before settling for male. Thus the peculiar character design.
Most common Japanese pronouns are not gender-specific, so it was easy to create a character first and then decide what gender they were. Perhaps this was the case with Thistle, too. Ryoko Kui had a character in mind but didn’t have this part of his biology figured out.
Elves Are Just Different
However, Delicious in Dungeon is not the first fantasy series to portray elves quite feminine, even the male ones. There’s another male elf in the series, Mithrun, and fans also admit that they thought he was a she at first. So perhaps it’s just the way elves in the series are.
There was another theory that Thistle might be a trans person, but the story doesn’t address that in any way, so it’s clear that he is just a very feminine man. Another idea is, the elves in Delicious in Dungeon were created to be androgynous, and you shouldn’t assume their gender just by looking at them.