Replication of variable within an Actor BP v. Animation BP

I have successfully replicated a variable within my Actor BP that upon Rep Notify propagates the new value to the Animation BP’s variable where it will be used.

But when I tried to eliminated the variable in the Actor BP and simply replicate the variable in the Animation BP, the Rep Notify doesn’t ever fire for the Clients.

Is data replication of variables fully available within both Animation BP and Actor BP? Or does Animation BP have issues of some types?