Gamma is a highly wanted criminal who possesses one Ring of the Dead. The story begins with young pickpocket John Elwood Shepherd befriending powder hunter Gamma Akutabi after a botched attempt to rob him.
This stolen life energy is converted into the zombie powder, which can only be extracted if twelve Rings of the Dead are brought together. These rings are dangerous magical artifacts that, individually, devour the life force of anyone they touch, rendering them comatose. Zombie powder can only be obtained from the Rings of the Dead. The zombie powder is a life-giving substance that can imbue an individual with limitless life force, grant them immortality, and even raise people from the dead.
The most prominent characters in the series are powder hunters, individuals who seek the titular zombie powder. is set in a western-themed environment with inconsistent levels of technology, similar to that found in Yasuhiro Nightow's manga series, Trigun. 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. Due to these factors, combined with its abrupt and unsatisfactory ending, critics hold that Zombiepowder. 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. was a technically proficient manga, but one which lacked the originality necessary to bear intrinsic appeal to most readers, which accounted for its cancellation. The series was a commercial failure in Japan but has been successful in the United States. 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 trio travel from town to town in this world, fighting other criminals for possession of the Rings of the Dead. 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. 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. Smith in their search for the Rings of the Dead.
follows a teenaged boy named Elwood Shepherd, who joins with mysterious criminals Gamma Akutabi and C.T. Although critical reception in the United States was largely mediocre, the series achieved moderate commercial success in the western market due to the prominence its author had achieved by that point for his second manga series, Bleach. is distributed in North America by Viz Media, who licensed it in 2005. The series was collected into four tankōbon volumes, released the following year. The manga ran in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump for 27 chapters from August 1999 to February 2000 before being canceled. (stylized as ZOMBIEPOWDER.) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tite Kubo.