Basic Trope: Two characters who were lovers in a previous life meet again and fall in love.
- Straight: Alice and Bob are Star-Crossed Lovers who can't be together due to the war between their countries. They commit double suicide to be Together in Death, but instead they are reborn and reunited in a future lifetime.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob are soulmates destined to spend eternity reincarnating and falling in love in each lifetime.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob were friends before they died and they continue this friendship after they are reborn.
- Justified:
- The gods decide that Alice and Bob deserve a second chance. They send their souls back to Earth and arrange for them to be reborn close to one another, so they can meet again and fall in love.
- Bob and Alice are reborn with all of their old memories, so they are still in love, actively seeking each other out.
- Inverted: Alice and Bob are worst enemies and continue their enmity every time they're reincarnated.
- Subverted: Alice only thinks she was Bob's lover in her previous life. They were actually siblings.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice and Bob were Not Blood Siblings but they bond over time spent together and end up Happily Married.
- Alternately, Alice and Bob were brother and sister, but they didn’t care and started a relationship anyway.
- Parodied:
- A fortune teller tells Bob about his tragic love story in a previous life, but promises him an epic romance in this one with the same person. He is excited to meet his destined lover, only to become terribly embarrassed when it turns out Alice reincarnated as his high school buddy who he did skirt-chasing with, now known as "Alex".
- Or the inverse: Alex is told by a fortune teller that he and Bob will eventually die and reincarnate, and the new reincarnations would end up as lovers, with Alex being the woman in the new relationship. Considering that he and Bob did skirt-chasing together, Alex is wondering if he should be horrified or aroused by this.
- Alice starts searching out for Bob's reincarnation. A fortune teller gives her the bad news that he reincarnated as a dog a year ago and is disturbed when she doesn't lose any interest and starts asking for more details.
- A fortune teller tells Bob about his tragic love story in a previous life, but promises him an epic romance in this one with the same person. He is excited to meet his destined lover, only to become terribly embarrassed when it turns out Alice reincarnated as his high school buddy who he did skirt-chasing with, now known as "Alex".
- Zig Zagged: Alice and Bob thought they were reincarnated lovers, but they were actually siblings. They were Not Blood Siblings, though, and were in love, so they start a relationship... but nope, Alice isn't really Bob's reincarnated lover, she's just an Identical Stranger. But Bob isn't the reincarnation of who he thought he was; he's actually the son of the reincarnation of his clone...and was in love with Alice in his past life! But then Alice turns out to be an Artificial Human...
- Averted: Alice and Bob were never lovers, in this life or any other.
- Enforced: "We need to add some tragedy to our romance and show how much these two are destined for each other. Let's reincarnate them and have them be Star-Crossed Lovers in the next life too."
- Lampshaded: "So we are reincarnated lovers? No wonder we jumped at each other so fast. A few hundred years of separation tends to do this to people."
- Invoked: Alice and Bob want to be reunited in their future life so they go through a special soul-bonding ritual.
- Exploited: Bob can't live without Alice, so after she dies, he kills himself so he can see her again after being reincarnated.
- Defied: Alice knows she and Bob were lovers in the previous life, but she decides to be with her chidhood friend Charlie instead.
- Discussed: "Isn't it surprising how well these two seem to know each other, even though they've been talking for just five minutes? Maybe they had meet in the previous life."
- Conversed: "I can bet they're going to make Alice and Bob reincarnated lovers. It’s an only explanation for these strange dreams and flashbacks."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice comes back many years after Bob is reborn. When they finally meet there is a big age difference between them and society is not going to accept the relationship. They end up as Star-Crossed Lovers again as a result.
- Bob is already married to Claire when he meets Alice again. Though he does love her back, feelings he had for his wife are still there. It leads to a situation in which Bob is torn between two women he loves. Claire is angry and confused over her husband suddenly leaving her for an unknown woman and Alice desperately tries to keep Bob at her side. It all ends up in another tragedy.
- Alice and Bob wait for each other but they never meet, as they were born on opposite sides of the world.
- Reborn!Alice retains her love for reborn!Bob's previous incarnation and vice versa, but their current incarnations feel nothing for each other. They start a relationship in order to be closer to each other's past selves but are thoroughly miserable.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice and Bob decide to reject social norms and get married anyway. In the next life they somehow make sure to be reborn at the same time and live Happily Ever After.
- After some Character Development and bonding moments Alice and Claire work out their problems. They agree to share Bob between themselves. For some reason Claire is reincarnated to continue their triangular relationship in another life.
- Well, why should they just stay in one place and wait? Through the Power of Love, they are motivated to start wandering the earth to eventually find one another.
- Eventually, Alice and Bob come to love each other for real.
- Implied: The bearer of the sword of light and the silver harp of wisdom always wind up in a romantic relationship and being an expy of the previous bearer to some degree.
- Played For Drama: While what they want the reincarnation cycle, it is a curse in many ways ranging from repeating the same mistakes, to the weight of lifetimes of trauma. Yet they can't bring themselves to break it.
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