Netflix Steampunk Western ‘Bass x Machina’ Is a Crackling Mix of Fantasy and Reality: TV Review

The U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves was a real person; an escaped slave turned groundbreaking lawman, Reeves’ remarkable biography has inspired a Taylor Sheridan show and HBO’s “Watchmen,” among other pieces of pop culture. The Netflix animated series “Bass x Machina,” created by LeSean Thomas (“Yasuke”) and produced by the Korean company Studio Mir (“The Legend of Korra”), centers a version of Reeves voiced with ample gravitas by Brian Tyree Henry, also an executive producer. But Reeves’ existence and the recent Civil War are about all “Bass x Machina” borrows from actual history. The rest is all glorious invention, starting with Bass’ robot arm.

This steampunk-ified version of the old West is filled with bull-shaped mechanical suits, goop-shooting guns, women who control lightning and other creations brought to life with anime-inspired style. But even a world where Bass can shoot lasers out of his left appendage isn’t free from the harsh constraints of prejudice. A bounty hunter in his pre-Marshal days, Bass remains haunted by his memories of the war, where he acquired his arm in a grisly experiment by the Mengele-like General Rivenbark (Currie Graham), a Confederate commander who remains at large. Bass may be free and happily married with his third child on the way, but even on the frontier, Black bounties go for half the rate of white ones.

“Bass x Machina” recalls “Blue Eye Samurai,” another Netflix animated series that transposes modern views of race and representation onto a much-mythologized past era. When Bass signs on for one last bounty job and reluctantly sets off into the Badlands with a precocious child — Dana Starr (Tati Gabrielle), an aspiring engineer in search of her missing uncle — in tow, “Bass x Machina” freely trades in established tropes of Western storytelling. What’s different are the elements the show chooses to emphasize: Bass himself and members of the Choctaw nation, like his friend Lighthorse (Chaske Spencer) and a group of element-controlling mystics known as the Holy People, have always been part of America’s fabric. “Bass x Machina” simply amplifies them and ups the badass quotient with figures like Etta (Starletta DuPois), a Native inventor who arms her hideout with electrified fruit trees. “It’s not magic; it’s our science,” Etta explains of her methods, pushing back on the reductive binary of the noble savage and the civilized society.

As Bass contemplates the Marshal job, the series mulls real ideas about what it means to represent a social order that’s otherwise indifferent to his humanity. A routine train robbery — of a high-tech monorail that still has racially segregated cars — turns into a debate on breaking, or following, laws that were never designed to protect you. Ahni (Cree Summer), a lightning wielder with a mysterious connection to Bass and his past, brands him an enemy for not joining her violent crusade; meanwhile, his wife Glory (Janelle Monáe, who also sings the theme song) urges Bass not to let his anger consume him, lest her husband become another, worse man than the one she married.

But “Bass x Machina” balances such ethical quandaries with a straightforwardly good time. Dana’s wide-eyed enthusiasm for the wonders of the industrial age is also, in part, the show’s. When an entire building sprouts legs and starts walking, or when a woman takes out a gang of ex-Confederate killers in a blaze of fire, it’s just awesome to behold, whatever the (alternate) historical context. “Bass x Machina” is rewarding to think about, yet just as easy to watch.

All six episodes of “Bass x Machina” are now streaming on Netflix.