These are generally pretty frustrating in different ways. I don't actually have trouble liking Anya, for a few reasons, the biggest one being...she's not the main character, which is a weird thing to say, but I think that her story makes sense in the context of Xander's; Xander fears that he (and perhaps all men) is horrible (like his father) and thus perhaps deserves the worst. This is especially true by the time Anya comes into the show. People don't take Xander's self-hatred seriously or his need to be loved seriously, so the neediness, intense love, moral confusion and outright murderous misandry of the person who comes into Xander's life remain mostly not taken seriously, including by Xander, until it's (nearly) too late. I do think there is something good-hearted about the way Xander comes to take Anya's love for him seriously before he takes her *hate* (for all men, eventually for him) seriously, and also something sad and of the victim mentality that Xander doesn't spend a lot of time seriously thinking about how he *or anyone remotely like him* (flawed men) particularly deserves not to be murdered.