Secrets of the Silent Witch

Secrets of the Silent Witch is a good series, with exceptional visuals, but excessive contrasting and good vs bad directing decisions.

There’s a lot of very good, if not great, things in this series. Unfortunately, some contrasting directing decisions pull it down quite a bit. In and across some scenes I was impressed, touched, and invested, and then in and across other scenes I was disappointed and at times annoyed, particularly because I otherwise liked it so much.

Social Anxiety can have contradictory themes. Low confidence in social settings and interactions while high focus or confidence in ability is very plausible. But the series pushes the contrasts too far.

The contrasting behavior and anxiety was pushed too excessively (not in number but in strength), and too long across the series, when there were already different tendencies.

I find some visual decisions drive a wedge into the otherwise very good presentations.

For example, an X as a mouth will never feel appropriate or non-disruptive for serious or significant situations. It’s an overly meta or overly extreme expressive choice that is detrimental to what could have been an appropriate mouth.