Sol Yulaan and Sgt. Buck Roosevelt, 1965 by Ishida1694
Yulaan meets Gunnery Sergeant Buck Roosevelt in 1965.
Who is Buck Roosevelt? A very manly man.
Buck Roosevelt is a Marine who is a devout warrior, a man who has dedicated his life to the art of combat and self-reliance. He's been to Korea and is about to head to Vietnam.
Roosevelt is surprisingly one of the few men of these times who tolerates Yulaan, probably because she understands him in a way no female ever has before, at least not any he's met. He's not about to speak for, say, those Soviet sharpshooters or anything. But the broads over here, they're a different stock, he says.
He tells Yulaan about his life story. He was just a typical boy like Raymond Miller, except he was a kid in the '40s instead of the '60s. He was born in 1931 in Circleville, Ohio, and was raised reading pulp fiction and adventure serials, fantasizing about being some manly warrior like Conan the Cimmerian or Doc Savage. When the Japanese laid waste to Pearl Harbor, he didn't even particularly care about the people who died or gave their lives. He was still a little too young to understand it. He didn't understand what death was, honestly. And that's what the rich man wanted from him. That's when he started his path towards being a warrior. When he finally understood death, when his uncle came back home wrapped in a flag and in a box, and instead of grief, he said to himself, "I wanna die like him." He didn't know what he was saying. He knew what death was by then, but didn't really understand the eternal implications. But that didn't matter.
He was an all-American boy during World War 2, with the same surname as the President, obsessed with manly heroes. He would fantasize of being in Europe. 1940s, 1240s, didn't matter. He's the kid Yulaan wanted to know, basically. He's the man she's molding Raymond into.
In his teenage years, he was a solitary kid who worked out, fought other boys, and learned how to shoot straight. And then he joined the military and took to their lifestyle of restriction. Not to the same extent as Yulaan, admittedly, but he realized the importance of physical training and hardship. Thus to keep himself fit, he became a boxer and lumberjack after Korea.
He is a very manly man because he lives by the seven virtues of manliness: Manliness, Courage, Industry, Resolution, Self-Reliance, Discipline, and Honor. He lives in a log cabin that he himself built, and willingly goes to fight for his country. He's a man of Masculine Self-Denial.
To Yulaan, this is a righteous warrior, a worthy opponent.
And if this guy is impressed by how manly Yulaan is, surely that's saying something. If anyone can tell you which kind of Self-Denial she engages in, it's him.
Feminine Self-Denial is best exemplified by Chavela Xaxalpa, the bisabuela of Vicente and Chale Jr. (in fact, circa 1965, Chale Jr's grandfather, Chale Sr., was himself just a boy). Chavela is a Godly woman of who denies her mind the burden of being heard and who dedicated her life to her family and children first and foremost. She is a woman of boundless love and sacrifice to her children, working tirelessly every day to keep her husband and children happy.
Chavela Xaxalpa is a woman of gracefulness, gentleness, empathy, humility, and sensitivity— tenets of Marianismo.
Sgt. Roosevelt, an American, never met Chavela Xaxalpa, who lived in Mexico.
But it doesn't take a brain surgeon to tell you that Yulaan is clearly not of the same sort as her. Yulaan's Self-Denial is very much in the same vein as the Laconic ones, those Spartan warriors who denied themselves in service of a greater, more glorious cause. She also lives in a yurt she herself built, and even then only occasionally. Her house has few amenities, and certainly no pleasantries.
She goes further than he could even dream of doing himself. He lives in a log cabin and runs a farm, but he still participates in society. Yulaan could be a cryptid if she wanted to. She hunts almost purely; the only times she doesn't hunt her own food is when she's with another person and feels it'd be rude to reject offerings of food or pleasantry. Now that is honor, especially considering what she is. She should otherwise be killing everything she comes across, but her self-restraint is great.
She sleeps on the floor whenever she's in her own house. And when she isn't in her house, she gets comfortable on the Earth. Because she is a warrior, and that means she's often out in the world. Not every place has a bed, and while she could spend time getting comfortable, simply finding shelter to rest is more valuable time spent.
This is the antithesis of femininity. Chavela is not a woman who forgoes material comforts. Heck, the whole point of her Self-Denial is to make sure her family is comfortable. Ideally, the Man of the House rewards her quiet work with comforts. It's literally the woman's role to be pampered. The more comfortable she is, the better the family is. A woman adopting harshness and denying vanity is essentially denying femininity. To be feminine is to be vain. It's to make yourself presentable and spend time grooming yourself to cultivate beauty for the community. That doesn't mean obsess over yourself, but it does mean to avoid being "hard." A woman can help, but she is not supposed to build the house or provide for the family. That's the Man's role. A woman certainly can learn how to do these things, but it's peripheral to herself.
So says 1965 society, at least.
It is this utter explosive failure of femininity that platonically attracts Sgt. Roosevelt. That Yulaan is some wuxia wizardess of godlike strength is peripheral to that which interests him more. Many ladies have been described as powerful beyond measure; far fewer, perhaps not even the Amazons, have been described as so vicious and spartan. It attracts many in the 2020s, so naturally far more would be beguiled in the 1960s.
Buck's never seen a female so well-built or aggressive, and he sure as Hell has never seen one with a monkey tail or wild electric hair before. As to what bollois are supposed to be, he's still not entirely sure...
It should be stressed that, as it's 1965, Sgt. Roosevelt has absolutely no idea what Saiyans are— no one, not even Akira Toriyama himself would know for another 24 years, so the closest analog to Yabans he'd have are either demons or Yahoos (a la Gulliver's Travels), or, more questionably and of-the-era, American Indians. Or, of course, some of those evil races and hordes that populated the hero pulps he'd read growing up before his father forced him to start reading the classics (til he got his revenge by reading the sweats).
An image of Little Miss Savage: Middle American Mythology