It's Super Effective (podcast)

It's Super Effective is a Pokémon-focused hosted by Steve Black Jr., also known by his initials SBJ. It is the flagship show of PKMNcast.com, which began as pokemonpodcast.com. It's Super Effective began on July 26, 2010, two days after the launch of the website.
==History==
===Six-year Anniversary===
At August 1, 2016, It's Super Effective celebrated its sixth birthday, and meant a redesign for the website as well as a new logo.http://pkmncast.com/news/2016/8/1/6-years-of-podcasts
===Ten-year Anniversary===
On August 3, 2020, It's Super Effective released its tenth anniversary special. A temporary gold and black version of the logo was used for this episode, and a few prior. A special Kickstarter was launched in the months leading up to the anniversary. It was an album containing the break music from the show. The cover art was based on the traditional Red and Blue cover art.
==Podcast==
===Current Segments===
*Introduction - The cast members talk about their own lives, and specifically avoid talking about Pokémon.
*News - The hosts discuss recent Pokémon-related news.
*Discussion- The episode after it's launch, the hosts discuss recent games or DLC and their various features in a spoiler free manner. The following week they discuss story aspects further.
*Question of the Week - After a delightful intro song from Greg (or occasionally a guest), Steve reads out a question from the Patreon Slack. The hosts then discuss it, and, most of the time, argue about it.
*Pokémon of the Week - Will Anderson presents a clue, referencing a Pokémon (or occasionally an item, character or location). The next week, SBJ, Greg and any guests shout their guesses (generally Chatot in Steve's case), and proceed to discuss the Pokémon. The discussion often includes facts and opinions about the Pokémon, trivia and a critique of the coloration, and Pokémon Shuffle icon. Then Will presents the clue for the following week.
*E-mails - This rarely seen segment consists of the hosts reading an e-mail from a non-Patron fan, and answering any questions they may have. Though not officially retired, the segment has not appeared since November 2019.
===Retired Segments===
*Item of the Week - The cast discuss a specific item for sale on pokemoncenter.com.
*Featured Team - Steve and the cast give comments and constructive criticism on a listener's submitted team of Pokémon. Steve has said that this is reminiscent of a similar feature in magazines he read in
* - Steve and occasionally another cast member grill another cast member (usually a new guest) with a string of questions, usually pertaining to a personal preference between two types, , or items. his childhood.
=== Pokémon community guests===
These people have made an appearances on the show, either as a co-host or as an interviewee.
*D'Andre Siggas ("Black Man Loves Pokémon" viral video)
*Christopher Niosi (Khoury's English dub voice actor)
*Marriland
*eSeamus of Bouncing Wailord
*Liam Pomfret (Archaic)
*Alexandra Salas (Kasumi)
*Joe Merrick ()
*Jake Paque (Professor Sycamore's English dub voice actor)
*Allegra Frank from Polygon.com
*
*Joshua Wittenkeller (TheJWittz)
*WWE's Xavier Woods / UpUpDownDown's Austin Creed
*Dan Ryckert from GiantBomb.com
====Live episodes====
It's Super Effective has featured various live shows since it debuted.
The first live show took place on for episode 25 and lasted almost three hours. Users called in during the show to talk with Black and Aaron Spriggs. A chat was also active during the recording where fans could ask questions and participate.
Initially, subsequent live shows were also done on BlogTalkRadio. Later, live shows were instead done via Twitch or Mixlr.
Additionally, while not livestreamed, several episodes have been recorded live at conventions such as the .
====Episode 100====
The one hundredth episode of It's Super Effective debuted on New Year's Eve 2012. The episode was five hours long and featured ten interviews with almost all of the main cast members, each interview lasting anywhere between 20 to 30 minutes. Music and over twenty fans' voicemails were featured in between the interviews to tie the show together. A couple throwback segments from older shows were included. After episode 100 was published, the show took two weeks off.
===Podcast art===
;Episodes 1 - 100
:Artwork features Ken Sugimori's official art of Gengar and is derived from 's box art.
;Episodes 101 and onwards
:The redesign of the podcast art was to tie into the redesign of the site. For legal reasons and to ever be featured in iTunes "Staff Picks", the change was also made to get away from using copyrighted imagery including the Pokémon logo and Ken Sugimori's artwork.
File:ISE.jpg|The original podcast art, featuring . 
File:|The new podcast art featuring the new ISE Logo.
==Related podcasts==
;Critical Hit
:A video podcast that is either consisting of various Pokémon-related things happening in Black Jr.'s life or a video version of the main audio podcast, depending on the episode. In the former's case, the podcast finishes off with a Pokémon-related YouTube video before the credits.
;Leftovers
:Steve's side project. Leftovers was hosted by Black Jr. and his friend Chris. Leftovers dealt with a more adult side of the Pokémon fandom, but is currently on hiatus. Also called "It's Super Offensive."
File:Critical_Hit.jpg|The podcast art for Critical Hit, featuring .
File:Leftovers.jpg|The podcast art for Leftovers, featuring .
;Crossing Lines
:An Animal Crossing podcast, hosted by Steve, with each episode focusing on the origins of a different Animal Crossing villager. It began on the 20th of March, 2020, following the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It ended on the 26th of May the same year. Episodes averaged at 7 minutes.
==Reception==
It's Super Effective is currently the most popular Pokémon podcast on and . "It's Super Effective" was pulled from iTunes after having to move their servers in July 2012. Once the server move was complete, "It's Super Effective" peaked at the #2 "Top Podcasts" in the "Video Game Podcasts" in the iTunes Store. On the Zune Marketplace, the podcast peaked at #55 on the service's "most subscribed podcasts" list and #48 on its "most subscribed audio podcasts" list.As shown in "Marketplace → Podcast" section of Zune software on October 23, 2012. Software is required to view list. It became the leading Pokémon podcast after The Pallet Tribune's WTPT - Pokémon Radio ended production in 2010, the same year that ISE debuted. It won the third, fourth, and fifth annual (2011 - 2013) in the community-created category of "The Best Podcast in Social Media""The Best Podcast in Social Media". Shorty Awards. with 50, 145, and 67 votes, respectively. For the 2013 Shorty Awards, host Steve Black Jr. (under his Twitter handle @draggingalake) placed second in the category of #podcaster with 747 votes as of March 1, 2013. While Black did not receive a trophy at the Shorty Awards, he tweeted a picture of the #podcaster trophy about 2 weeks after the award ceremony that he received in the mail."The #Podcaster Shorty Award". Shorty Awards.
It's Super Effective sits with 620 user reviews in the iTunes Store putting it at a solid five stars. 
Since debuting on in April 2012, the show has had a total listening time of over 220,000 minutes alone from listeners using the service.Screencap of podcast's Stitcher page
==Competition==
"It's Super Effective" debuted at the end of the P.U.C.L. and WTPT - Pokémon Radio rivalry. ISE talked about both Pokémon Monday and WTPT on various episodes but never mentioned P.U.C.L directly. P.U.C.L. then called out Black on episode 90 during reading their fan mail. After that point, it was mentioned on ISE that Black stated it was "funny" that P.U.C.L. thought they "won" at being the #1 Pokémon podcast because ISE, in only a couple of months, passed both these establish shows in popularity and listeners. ISE not only broke into the top 100 most downloaded video game podcasts, in iTunes, when the other show did not, but ISE sits with over 10× as many Facebook fans and 5000+ Twitter fans. Since then not much has been said between theses shows. Bouncing Wailord, on the other hand, has never said anything bad about ISE or the staff of the show. In fact, most of the ISE cast has appeared on their episodes. 
==Awards==
Year	Award 	Category 	Notes 	Outcome
2011	Shorty Award 	Best Podcast in Social Media (3rd Annual) 	@pokemonpodcast - 50 Votes 	Won
2012	Shorty Award 	Best Podcast in Social Media (4th Annual) 	@pokemonpodcast - 145 Votes 	Won
2013	Shorty Award 	Best Podcast in Social Media (5th Annual) 	@pokemonpodcast - 67 Votes 	Won
2013	Shorty Award 	Best Podcaster in Social Media (5th Annual)	@draggingalake - 747 Votes to finalize 2nd Place (No Winner)	Nominated
2013	Milwaukee A-List	Best Radio Personalities 	@draggingalake - Top Five Finalist 	3rd Place
==Staff==
====Current Hosts====
;Steve Black Jr.
:Creator/host of the It's Super Effective podcast and webmaster of PKMNcast.com
;William Anderson
:Co-host and Pokemon of the Week grandmaster
;Greg Leatherman
:Co-host and Question of the Week theme song maker
====Former Hosts====
;Logan Jenkins
;Micah the Brave
====Recurring Guests====
;Irene
:Wife of SBJ
;Al
:The Scottish one
;Maddy
:Host of recurring Maddy on the Move segment
==References==
Category:Fan sites
Category:Podcasts