We’re only going to cover mostly the anime adaptation, so no peeking at the light novels past volume 2 (the flashback scene happened in volume 2). Don’t get us wrong about dismissing the light novels because we’re not. At volume 6, Hamefura isn’t done with the story and given the story’s length, and that episode 8 is just an anime-only filler, it’s safe to assume the anime will alter some of the plot so everything can easily fit in a 12 episode format. That’s the way it is, especially for stories that are still ongoing, or when the studio has no plans for making sequels or OVAs.

How these girls end up being the characters in Fortune Lover is hard to say for certain. In typical isekai anime fashion, the main character gets transported to a different world through a set of conditions, be it through a magical portal or being uploaded to a video game world. The world of Fortune Lover has no floating user interface, nor do the characters use gaming terminology like “leveling up” or describe their health and mana as HP and MP because Fortune Lover is a visual novel where the only thing that’s interactive to the player is selecting dialogue and pressing a button to scroll through it. But, obviously, Fortune Lover is still a video game because Catarina correctly predicts every scenario, predicting each character’s personality, motives, and ultimate role within the story with pinpoint accuracy.

Maybe, JUST MAYBE the reason is simply because of MAGIC! As the popular saying goes: “It’s magic; we ain’t gonna explain sh*t!”

We’re speculating either Acchan committed suicide or maybe died in an accident a few days or months after her best friend died. Yep, suicide, but…! We’re leaning towards the “died in an accident” theory because Acchan isn’t the type of girl who would end her life—she said so herself that she’ll continue living in episode 7. But here lies the problem: if Acchan were to continue living until she reaches old age, then there would be a huge age discrepancy between her and Catarina. By the time Acchan passes away at the age of, say, 70 and gets reborn into the world of Fortune Lover, then Catarina would already be in her mid-90s, and that is assuming she avoided all death flags or gets to live as a hermit, farming somewhere on the countryside. Unless reincarnation transcends time and space, the “death by accident theory” is the only plausible explanation why the two were reborn around the same age.

Playing Fortune Lover before getting killed in an accident or by other means is a possible prerequisite to getting someone into another world. Catarina spent the entire evening playing Fortune Lover because she was trying to conquer the black-hearted sadistic prince (hmm, wonder who could this be!) and died shortly thereafter when going to school. Acchan may have met the same conditions and gets transported to Fortune Lover as well. Apart from plot convenience, the reason why Acchan is reincarnated as Sophia and her best friend is reincarnated as Catarina is simple: they share the same personality or, at the very least, share some personality traits. Now, again, this is just speculation and we’re probably just overthinking this… Honestly, we are overthinking this. Yeah, we are.

Or maybe Acchan conned God into sending her to the world where her best friend was reincarnated? Oh wait, a story like that already exists! You should totally check out “Potion Loli,” a.k.a. “I Shall Survive Using Potions!,” by the way.