and to expand the length of the later volumes, which would otherwise have been shorter than Viz's normal releases, to standard pagecounts. Chapters Reception Zombiepowder. sold modestly in Japan, but has been commercially successful in the United States. The second volume placed in the top 100 graphic novels for Christmas 2006. Theron Martin of Anime News Network believed the series could have achieved some success in the United States without the Bleach connection due to the American market's larger appetite for series which focus on violent action, but that the series was heavily buoyed by Bleachs international popularity, and primarily imported for an audience of "Kubo ." Critical reception of Zombiepowder. as a whole mostly deemed it mediocre and average. Two reviews from Anime News Network ranked it as a C, it received a C+ review from MangaCast, a Den of Geek review gave it 3/5 stars, and an IGN review concluded it was "no better or worse many other shōnen titles" with "not much to separate it from the massive stock of shōnen series that are similar to it." Jason Thompson included it in a list of "mediocre" shōnen action titles whose clichéd nature and "ripped-off" character designs left them interesting only to readers unacquainted with the tropes of the genre. The universal criticism in these reviews is that the series as a whole lacks originality, with most mentioning that it reads very much like the author's first effort it is, and would therefore appeal mostly to fans of the author. While he echoed most individual criticisms of the English-language reviewers, a divergent conclusion was reached by Russian critic Alexander Gorban of Animemaniacs Magazine Online, who believes that Zombiepowder.s fundamentals were all strong, and that the failure of the series in Japan was instead due to Tite Kubo's overreach in publishing a series in the highly-competitive Weekly Shōnen Jump at such a young age. Had the freshman author been serialized in a less prominent magazine, asserts Gorban, Zombiepowder. would have been allowed longer to establish itself and could have developed into a series at least as good as Bleach. Reception for individual elements of Zombiepowder. was more mixed. The series premise of seeking magical items was criticized as cliche by ANN and IGN, but deemed sufficient for the needs of the story by AMO, and the parasitic nature of the rings and zombie powder themselves were complimented by MangaCast