of IGN noted the obligatory genre influence of martial arts anime Dragon Ball Z. The series also borrows terminology from the music industry, referring to each chapter as a track, the bonus omake content in each volume as B-Sides, and naming primary character Elwood after a record label founder. Zombiepowder. began serialization in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump on August 2, 1999, and ran a brief 27 chapters before being canceled on February 28, 2000. According to the author's commentary in the cover leaf of the third volume, Tite Kubo was in a state of severe emotional trauma when he wrote it, and only began to be happy with the quality of the series as it neared its ending. Speaking retrospectively 12 years later, Kubo stated that he was not yet used to the scheduling pressures of weekly serialization when he wrote Zombiepowder., and that at the time he paid too much attention to his editor's comments rather than trusting his own ideas. Other than Tite Kubo, Zombiepowder. had five credited staff, though their exact roles in its production were never specified. The series was collected into four volumes, published in 2000 in Japan. Zombiepowder. was licensed for English distribution by Viz Media in 2005, following the success of Tite Kubo's second manga series, Bleach. The first English volume was released in the United States in September 2006, and the last was released in June 2007. A French-language edition began publication through Tonkam in 2013. The Viz Media releases preserve the Japanese reading order and overlay the visual sound effects with equivalent English text. The English lettering was criticized for being overly large, which Anime News Network thought made the characters appear to be shouting at inappropriate moments. There are several additional differences between the Japanese and English volume releases of Zombiepowder.. The cover of the second manga volume, which featured an illustration of C.T. Smith holding a gun to his own head, was replaced in the English edition with new art of Gamma in sunglasses. The English editions of volumes 2–4 also each contain a one-shot story from early in Kubo's career, which were not present in the Japanese collections: Ultra Unholy Hearted Machine, Rune Master Urara, and Bad Shield United, respectively. These extra stories were included for two apparent reasons: to further appeal to Zombiepowder.s primary English-speaking audience of Bleach fans interested in the development of Tite Kubo's style,