Zombiepowder. (stylized as ZOMBIEPOWDER.) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tite Kubo. The manga ran in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump for 27 chapters from August 1999 to February 2000 before being canceled. The series was collected into four tankōbon volumes, released the following year. Zombiepowder. is distributed in North America by Viz Media, who licensed it in 2005. Although critical reception in the United States was largely mediocre, the series achieved moderate commercial success in the western market due to the prominence Tite Kubo had achieved by that point for his second manga series, Bleach. Zombiepowder. follows a teenaged boy named Elwood Shepherd, who joins with mysterious criminals Gamma Akutabi and C.T. Smith in their search for the Rings of the Dead. These rings are a group of legendary artifacts with the power to resurrect the dead and grant immortality to anyone who collects 12 of them. The series has a Weird West setting which mixes a background of sparsely populated frontier settlements and gunslinger aesthetics with modern conveniences, occult magic, supernatural martial arts, and mad science. The trio travel from town to town in this world, fighting other criminals for possession of the Rings of the Dead. The protagonists obtain three of the rings in the course of the story, but due to the series' cancellation, the eventual success or failure of their quest is unknown. The series was a commercial failure in Japan but has been successful in the United States. Critical consensus is that Zombiepowder. was a technically proficient manga, but one which lacked the originality necessary to bear intrinsic appeal to most readers, which accounted for its cancellation. Additionally, the series was heavily focused on battles even by the standards of action manga, though whether this was a positive or negative trait is a matter of contention. Due to these factors, combined with its abrupt and unsatisfactory ending, critics hold that Zombiepowder. is significant primarily as a chapter in the career of its author, and would otherwise be a footnote which found an audience only among fans of violent action. Setting and plot Zombiepowder. is set in a western-themed environment with inconsistent levels of technology, similar to that found in Yasuhiro Nightow's manga series, Trigun. The most prominent characters in the series are powder hunters, individuals who seek the titular zombie powder. The zombie powder is a life-giving substance that