Saiyajin

Originally by Toei, edited with NovelAI

Here's Knife Lady, that classic Saiyaness from DBZ episode 20, aka Fem!Kakarot with a Mullet. I place her above Red Hair Guy from episode 49 in terms of "weird background characters who only appear for a single scene but have really interesting designs" but both are roughly on par to me.
 
 
I think what endears me to Knife Lady and Red Hair Guy is that they look so adorably "80s/early 90s" with their massive wild hair and spiky mullets. They fully sell the idea of Dragon Ball Z being an unintentional period piece and the Saiyans being "ultra-80s sci-fi space pirate barbarians," harkening back to those days of airbrushed chrome, red headbands, kung fu movies, muscular fantasy, and heavy metal-meets-city pop.

You know what I mean? Saiyans— the REAL Saiyans from 1989-1991— are literally wearing "militarized fitness freak/jazzercise aerobics" armor and have glam metal/goth punk hair (then again, the Freeza Force in general has that glammy aerobics-meets-Space Mercenary look to it). That's what makes Saiyans so fun. Take 80s fitness freak gear with its spandex, unitards, legwarmers, kneepads, armbands and headbands, and then combine it with cheesy 80s sci-fi armor and augmented reality eyepieces. And then give them monkey tails, goofy extreme hair, and vegetable-themed names, and yet they have a culture that makes them seem ripped out of Warhammer 40k.


There's a reason I ripped off Saiyans to create Yabans in the Yabanverse: www.deviantart.com/tag/yabanve…


As for Knife Lady, she and her other nameless goons scratch a competing itch that is also turbo-80s: that love of Blood and Thunder barbarian fantasy. I honed them further into Primal Yabans to create the ultimate "primeval barbarians", but Ancient Saiyans are great on their own. They're even more primeval than the likes of Conan the Cimmerian and his thematic cohorts.

Does Conan have a prehensile monkey tail and wild electrified hair? I thought not!

This is why I wish more had been done with the Saiyans in retrospect. They hit two of the most 80s possible kinds of sci-fi/fantasy you can create.

Knife Lady being female so that people can simp for her helps her appeal, especially in a series as sausage-flavored as Dragon Ball. I also simp for muscle girls, and she's the closest Dragon Ball got to that in its classic days. I suppose her appeal comes from the fact that she is a decent representative of how Saiyans were all supposed to be savage battle-crazed barbarians, regardless of gender.
Though I'm most sold on that stupid hair. 

Seriously, Toei. Enough with the Bart Simpson hair. Give us our 80s glam-haired Saiyans back. Go wild with Saiyan hair designs again. Don't appeal to drip-loving bougie Zoomers; go all in on that outrageous, absurd, dorky 80s hairspray-meets-electrical socket hair that made Saiyans memorable (I say, arguing into the void). Until then, I'll keep having fun with Yabans.