And we go around the square
Circle Square is an Irish animation about a small community with Vanessa the dragon as the main character.The community lives in a circle of houses on a little island. Vanessa the Dragon is the lynchpin in the neighbourhood, always forging connections between her neighbours, and encouraging them to help each other out. Each episode starts with the anticipation of finding out which house we're going to stop at today.It is based on everyday experiences people have.
Tropes found in Circle Square:
- Ambiguously Human: The wizard family look human enough, but the fact they seem very adept with magic, are chalk-skinned (but do not have albinism) and seem not to age, can make some question what they really are. They seem human enough in behavior terms though.
- Comic-Book Time: How time passes in the show is never explained, and none of the characters age at all.
- Long-Lost Uncle Aesop: Every single guest character who is introduced shows up for the episode and is never mentioned again; compared to other characters these are very often characters whose personalities rarely change.
- Lost Aesop: The episode "Green Island" was about environmentalism, with Alba the owl, Tufty the owl's policewoman mother, having a crisis of conscience over climate change and she went around the island trying to fix things. The aesop was supposed to be about how anyone can make a difference, however small, but by the end of the episode they weren't sure what the moral was supposed to be. "Installing a wind turbine solves some problems" was one suggestion viewers read into it, but that's probably not a moral.
- No Antagonist: There's no villain or Big Bad, the main conflict is trying to get along with one another. There isn't even a Jerkass. The one episode where it seemed like there was a jerkish character who was a One-Shot Character, he was simply The Boo Radley and not actually a jerk.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Vanessa is a purple dragon who doesn't seem to be able to fly or breathe fire; she's more round in shape.
- Out of Focus: Isabella the dog only got one episode that focused on her compared to the rest of the residents.
- Punny Name: It's set on a circular island with the houses in a square (street of houses in that shape) and also attempts to square the circle too.
- Status Quo Is God: Enforced. Things have to return to normal after each episode so a conflict can occur and characters can learn a lesson. Also, the target audience don't learn lessons immediately so they cannot do anything that dramatically changes the series' status quo.
- Sugar Bowl: Subverted. Circle Square looks like a happy place, but the show covers deep and sometimes dark topics, and it's a not very idealistic place but no Crapsack World or Crapsaccharine World.
- The Owl-Knowing One: A family of policeman owls exist on the island, although they zig-zag between being competent and ditzy depending on the episode.
