We see that all the children in the panels are clearly upset that Henderson is leaving the school, and even Becky looks sad, but itâs interesting to me that Anya doesnât look as affected as everyone else. We see her behaving the same way multiple times throughout the manga whenever she doesnât have her parents around.
For example, when their entire class is singing a farewell song for George, Anyaâs the only one standing there with an unimpressed look on her face. Or when sheâs caught up in situations that would terrify any person, let alone a child, she doesnât start crying until sheâs in Yorâs arms.
We donât explicitly know what Anya went through before the story begins, but we do know it wasnât anything good, and it was certainly traumatic. She was created in a lab, treated as an experiment, and happened to escape, which already tells us a lot. After that, she ended up in an orphanage, only to be adopted and returned four separate times. Four times. That alone is devastating to imagine, especially for a kid who can literally hear every thought from the adults around her. She knows exactly what they think of her, and will immediately know if they find her weird and strange. She has no protection from those thoughts. She absorbs the full emotional truth of every adult who's supposed to care about her, and that kind of constant rejection and knowing why is just... yeah. And despite how young she is, sheâs shockingly good at hiding her secret, because sheâs already lived through the consequences of people realizing thereâs something off about her. She was told to keep her ability hidden, and sheâs learned firsthand that her powers are exactly why most people find her unsettling.
Sheâs probably internalized all of this, and on top of being told by the scientists who experimented on her to never reveal her powers to anyone, sheâs learned to hide what she can do almost reflexively. We can see that her life before Loid was awful, and there was no stability, no promised safety, and definitely no one who cared about her feelings, her emotions, her tears⌠none of it ever mattered to the adults around her.
So this is a learned behavior, not something that came naturally. She doesnât cry or react the way the other kids at school do because she learned, very early on, that there was no point. In frightening moments, she doesnât have the time to turn inward and feel her own emotions, she just defaults to survival mode because sheâs always had to rely on herself. She won't act like a typical kid who starts crying as soon as they sense danger, but she'll handle the scary moment itself with uncanny calmâ which gets commented on by her fellow students and the adults during the bus hijacking arc ("Her nerves aren't made of steel, it's made of tungsten!")⌠and then falls apart only after her safety net appearsâ her parents!!
Sheâs starting to realize she can fall apart, as long as her mom or dad is there to catch her. Sheâs learning she can break down, trusting them with her emotions, trusting them that they will handle any danger she comes across once sheâs safely in their arms.
And I love that itâs the same for all the Forgers, as the whole manga/show keeps revolving around the fact that they're a group of misfits learning to rely on each other after having no one, and getting accepted for all their quirks. They fit together instantly, even with all the lies, because on some intrinsic level, they recognize each otherâs loneliness, each otherâs fears, and each otherâs want/need to belong. They understand one another in ways no one else ever did, and thatâs what makes them one of the best representations of found family I've ever seen in media.
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