I read that Anya's design was adapted from Ashe, a character in Tatsuya Endo's previous one-shot Rengoku no Ashe so I decided to read it.
And you can straight away see the resemblance, the pink hair the Eden uniform the “horns”. But as I was reading the one shot, Ashe’s character resembled Yor more. Ashe and Anya’s powers are somewhat similar but their approach to dealing with it is different, Anya craves stimulation, she is energetic bubbly and cheerful, but Ashe’s personality is rather serious, quite and socially withdrawn (because she has to hide her “witch” powers) like Yor.
In terms of appearance Ashe wears the same spiked earrings like Yor and she too has red eyes. Additionally Yor and Ashe face structure is similar, Endo draws them both the same way.
The same contemplative gaze.
The same fight stance.
It seems like Endo decided to split Ashe’s character design into two separate characters for Spy x Family. And that’s just amazing because I always wondered what Anya would have looked like if she was Loid and Yor’s biological child and the answer is Ashe. (Let’s pretend Loid’s genes are very dormant).
I hope teenage Anya continues to look like Ashe, I want other characters to comment on how Anya looks exactly like her mother. Twilight often wonders how he managed to adopt a girl that grew to resemble so much, Fiona (internally in tears) tells new recruits at WISE how skilled and analytical best spy Twilight is to forge a family that looks so alike.
Damian has a little crush on Yor because he thinks she is pretty, years later he looks at teenage Anya and just goes oh shit, Melinda finds it adorable. Camilla thinks Yor and Loid had Anya in secret years ago and where hiding her like a shameful secret. Yuri is convinced that Yor’s love and care is so great that they have powers to remodel genes.
