Sprite Renderer seems to ignore sorting order

I searched all sprite order topics, but I can't find an answer to my specific problem. I think I have encountered some kind of bug.

I am trying to make a sort of 2d avatar, with some simple animations. Kind of like a puppet, made out of 2d sprites. It has a core sprites, wich is connected to a torso and a hip, wich in turn connect to arms and legs etc. The problem is that the core sprite is rendered on top of the hip sprite no matter what I do!!!

What you see in this image is the core sprite, with its sorting layer set to Avatar1 and its order set to 0. I made the sprite black and white so you can see it more clearly. It is clearly rendered over the hip piece, dispite the hip sprite also being on layer "avatar1" with its order set to 20.

Strangely enough, the core piece is rendered below the torso piece and I can also change the hips order compared to the leg pieces. For example:

Here I set the core sprites order to 100. You can see that now it is rendered above both the torso and hip. All three are still on the "avatar1" layer. Playing around with all the orders, I can make the legs appear behind or infront of the hip and the torso infront or behind the core.

But Nomatter what I do, I can't get the Core behind the Hip!!!

Further information:

• Both Torso and Hip are parents from Core. These objects contain nothing except sprite renderers.

• The parent of Core contains an animator, as I am working on animations for the 2d avatar.