...2!

So glad you asked, Tumblr user @heavenlysphere !

(Please excuse the formatting. I am fighting against the Tumblr image limit right now.)

Anyway, in his final encounter in 15th anniversary, Lemres faces Rulue. While I’ve had to abbreviate this conversation for brevity, it is very obvious that he is totally glazing her up throughout this interaction and that Rulue is pretty into it.

That being said, I’d be remiss not to mention the fact that everyone seems to be glazing Rulue up in this game. (As they should.) This game moreso than any other SEGA game really does play up Rulue as something of a hot commodity. (Based, they should bring this back.)

However, even among the many exchanges Rulue has with other characters buttering her up, Lemres goes above and beyond in glazing Rulue. Also moreso than in any other interaction, Rulue is eating it up, and even reciprocating it. Granted, this interaction is fairly mundane, but by Puyo standards, this does feel quite romantically charged for not being a “love-stricken” scene. I might go so far as to say this scene could hint at mutual attraction.

While not really relevant to the central thesis of this post, I’d like to acknowledge this Gem from Lemres’s interaction with Schezo in the same game.

I totally get this lol. I just wanna share my opinion on Rulue though because I really like her!!

Both of them are constantly seeking to improve themselves by any means necessary, they’ve just chosen different routes by which to improve themselves. While Raffina focused on overcoming her innately weak magic by honing her martial arts prowess, and augmenting her magic with that magic stone I know the name of, Klug chose to become powerful by loaning magic from his demonbooken. Both of them have a lot to prove, and take their training super seriously. Despite both being very rigorous in their pursuit of improvement, neither seems to have any respect for the others’ field of study. Granted, neither really seems to have respect for any of their peers, and only seem to show respect to Accord, and their respective role models, Lemres and Rulue. (Actually, Raffina seems to respect Lemres quite a bit, and Klug… Maybe we don’t talk about his interactions with Rulue.)

One of the main differences between them that I’d like to highlight is that we see Klug’s research and efforts backfire. There’s a whole character (Strange Possessed Klug) that exclusively exists to demonstrate what happens when Klug’s research backfires. Very rarely do we see Raffina experience any adverse effects from her training, and honestly, I feel like it’s a missed opportunity. The strain that Raffina is putting on her body from such a rigorous workout routine could be a very fascinating concept to explore, but I don’t think SEGA has any interest in doing so. At least partially because Klug fans fucking dwarf us in numbers.

Compile games sometimes explicitely say that she attacks by converting the same energy others use for magic into Ki-attacks, yes.

That said, it's still super weird, because Madou R, the first game where she was playable, has her still drink booze to "replenish MP", same as Schezo and Arle, and while "booze=mana" is a common trope in JRPGs for some reason, it is hard to grasp how this translates to "being drunk gives you energy to punch".

Waku Puyo Dungeon and Madou Saturn also have her Ki-Attacks consume "MP", same as Schezo's and Arle's attacks, despite the lore treating it like it's a different thing somehow.