Zimbabwean animation keeps finding new ways to punch above its weight. Body Count, an original animated drama series from Harare studio Lightbulbs & Lazers Animation, launched its first episodes in mid 2026, and it plays less like a scrappy local experiment than a confident, festival-ready piece of work.
Written and directed by the studio's founder Eugene Ramirez Mapondera, with Romeo Chandiposha as executive producer, Body Count follows a tight circle of friends whose reunion unravels into buried insecurities, prejudice, and dangerous ideas over the course of one unforgettable night. The show doesn't shy away from difficult territory either, its episodes work through masculinity, faith, reproductive health, and stigma with the kind of dark comedy that's become Lightbulbs & Lazers' signature.
A medium that's come of age
Animation has spent decades being treated as the junior partner to live action, cheaper to fake, harder to take seriously. That's changed fast. Cheaper software, smaller studios able to self-publish straight to YouTube, and streaming platforms hungry for distinctive voices have flattened a lot of the old barriers, and African animation has been one of the biggest beneficiaries. Studios like Nigeria's Kugali and South Africa's Triggerfish spent the last decade proving the continent could produce work with genuine international reach, Kugali co-created the Disney+ series Iwájú with Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2024 (a credit that Zimbabwean comic artist Bill Masuku also carries, from storyboarding work on the same show), and Triggerfish co-produced Kiya & the Kimoja Heroes for Disney Junior.
Lightbulbs & Lazers is part of that same wave landing in Zimbabwe. Mapondera built the studio around pairing storytelling with actual research into the social issues it dramatizes, rather than just borrowing animation as a stylistic gimmick, and it showed enough to earn the studio a seat at the World Intellectual Property Organization's Conversation on IP and Frontier Technologies in Geneva in 2024. Body Count is the clearest evidence yet of what that approach looks like at full length, tightly directed, visually confident, and willing to sit in genuinely uncomfortable territory rather than resolve it neatly.
It's also a proud moment for us personally. Among the cast bringing the series to life is our own co-founder Elliot Twist, one of the lead voices in the friend group at the center of the story, going from covering Zimbabwean music documentaries for this site to actually starring in one himself.
Body Count is currently eight episodes deep and rolling out on YouTube, distributed alongside earGROUND TV, so catch up on "The Reunion" above and follow the playlist for the rest of the season.
Sources
- Body Count Web Series, Lightbulbs and Lazers Animation
- About Us, Lightbulbs & Lazers
- Pre-screening of Body Count Episode 1 & 2, LinkedIn
- Iwájú is the result of a 'groundbreaking' Disney Animation and Pan-African partnership, ABC News
- eOne Announces Premiere Date for New Animated Series "Kiya & the Kimoja Heroes", Hasbro
