Junkyard King

Animation · Fantasy · Series · 2 Episodes · 15:40 total · TV-PG

Series Review

Written by Kineograph

Oakhaven, Washington, October 1989. Three kids have gone missing, and Artie — goggles, backpack, a bedroom wall of red yarn — is the only one connecting the dots. They lead to the junkyard, where a mechanical raven, a katana with a glowing pink edge, and a girl called the Sovereign are waiting. Junkyard King is the Arthur legend rebuilt out of scrap metal, and it is lovely.

Chapter 0 — The Pink Edge

Chapter 0 does in six minutes what many pilots fail to do in forty: it gives its hero a world, a weapon, a friend and a warning. Artie follows his missing-kids map into the junkyard at dusk and meets Socket, a sarcastic mechanical raven who denies being a chicken with the weariness of a bird who has had the conversation before. Then the scrap begins to stand up: a rust knight, a hollow electromagnet wearing trash for armour, and Artie — who cannot out-fight it — out-thinks it, feeding it a five-ton iron hook until it shorts itself out in a storm of pink sparks. The victory lasts one breath. Somewhere in the dark, a woman has marked him; Socket, suddenly serious, tells him the fight has told the junkyard’s owner exactly where he is.

Chapter 1 — Training

Chapter 1 opens under a title card — Oakhaven, Washington, October 13, 1989 — and spends its length the way good second chapters do: widening. Socket explains the broken mirror world on the other side of the junkyard, where everything discarded here arrives there — and where the Sovereign, a girl Artie’s age who commands the iron creatures, has taken the three missing kids. Artie’s first answer is no, and the chapter is honest enough to let him mean it, right up until the question that turns him: what if it was him, and nobody came? The training that follows — a katana, a sunset, a hundred failed swings among the freight cars — ends with the blade finally catching the light, and with Socket freezing at a sound only he recognises: “I’m going to kill him.” Whoever has just arrived, Chapter 2 has a fight on its hands.

Where It Strains

Chapter 1’s middle is one long lore briefing, and while Socket delivers it with charm, the mirror world’s rules arrive faster than they can be pictured. The 1989 setting is worn lightly — VHS tapes and a Walkman-era bedroom do most of the work. And the numbering will confuse newcomers: the series genuinely starts at Chapter 0, which is a prologue in length but not in importance.

Final Thoughts

Junkyard King is a small Arthurian epic with a painter’s eye and a real heart — a boy, a bird, a glowing sword and a kingdom made of everything the world threw away. Fifteen minutes, two chapters, and the strongest “one more episode” pull in this batch. Somebody give this junkyard a season.

Scene Breakdown

Chapter 0: 0:00 Narration: Oakhaven, the 1980s, and a boy who asks too many questions. · 0:50 The classroom; the red-yarn map of three missing kids. · 1:40 The junkyard at dusk. · 2:20 Socket, who is not a chicken. · 3:00 The rust knight rises. · 3:50 The five-ton hook: Artie wins with his head. · 4:50 The watcher marks him. · 5:40 “The owner knows.” · Credits: Created & Directed by Henry Daubrez.

Chapter 1: 0:00 “Oakhaven, Washington — October 13, 1989.” The attic room. · 1:10 The blade, and what it is for. · 2:00 Socket’s lore: the broken mirror world. · 3:00 The Sovereign and her iron creatures. · 3:30 The three taken kids. · 4:20 Artie refuses — then: “What if nobody came?” · 5:40 The training montage. · 7:30 The blade catches the light. · 8:20 Socket recognises the arrival. “I’m going to kill him.”

Junkyard King · Created by Henry Daubrez · Reviewed by Kineograph