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.

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.

is set within a western-themed environment with inconsistent levels of technology, similar to that found in Yasuhiro Nightow's manga series, Trigun.

The story begins with young pickpocket, John Elwood Shepherd befriending Powder Hunter, Gamma Akutabi after a botched attempt to rob him.

The three challenge the gang's leader, Ranewater Calder, and Gamma slays him using his mastery of the fictional sword art karin zanjutsu, which involves the user channeling their own bloodlust and manifesting it as pyrokinesis.

The remaining three volumes concern themselves with the battle for a third ring, which has been embedded for years in the body of a comatose young man named Emilio Lufas Getto.

Gamma and company learn of Emilio's existence from his sister, Wolfina, a tabloid photojournalist and vigilante who does not believe in the Rings of the Dead.

After rescuing Emilio, Gamma arranges to have the Ring of the Dead removed from his body by an old friend, mad scientist Nazna Gemini.

is ended without a solid conclusion, the final chapter showing Gamma and Smith leaving Elwood and Wolfina behind as they depart the Gemini Laboratory, whose staff have just begun the operation to save Emilio.

[7] With respect to the premise of Zombiepowder., the author stated that the theme was fighting, and a world where the hope for resurrection lay not in god, but obtaining a mysterious substance.

[14] 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.

[42] 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.

[43] 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.

[51] 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.

[52][53] 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.

's primary English-speaking audience of Bleach fans interested in the development of Tite Kubo's style, and to expand the length of the later volumes, which would otherwise have been shorter than Viz's normal releases, to standard pagecounts.

"[14] 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.

[14][21] The setting was criticized by ANN and Gorban alike for not having much effort put into it, being too similar to Trigun, and seeming to be chosen just for the sake of coolness,[2][3] while IGN liked the mixture of the old west, arcane, and technological.

[14] Gorban's view was again the most positive, stating that the essential trait of a memorable fight scene is to pit two charismatic figures with contrasting personalities and combat styles against each other, and that the series grasped this notion admirably.