Relationshrimp dynamics

My brain for 6 hours straight:

Think about it. Celebi is the protector of the Ilex Forest. A guardian spirit, if you will. Watching over nature and Pokémon alike. Giovanni is a career criminal who hurts Pokémon, treats people badly, and probably doesn't respect the rules of the forest. However, these are kind of Pokémon Reasons to dislike someone. Not really Human Reasons. And while mythicals and legendaries are shown to be smart, they're smart enough to know they aren't humans.

In other games (like Rangers) Celebi is smart enough to grasp that humans need "context" and "motivation" to do things. I think this was likely the same thing. Celebi wanted Ethan and Lyra (regardless who you pick, both are technically there) to stop Giovanni. But to ensure that they really would help it drive a man to implied suicide, they'd need a pretty good reason.

So here's Giovanni abandoning his child. Pretty heinous, right? Yes, humans raise their babies for like, a lot of time, many years of time, so surely, seeing this will make Lyra and Ethan HATE Giovanni. See him abandon his young! See his irredeemable behavior! You agree he needs to die now, right?

Most of the legendary and mythical Pokémon can be a bit, hm, drastic. (Looking at Mewtwo specifically, but Genesect in a later gen is a good example.) They tend to look at things in a more extreme light than humans do. I do think most of them understand that humans can follow what they're saying when what they're saying is "Steven, I think we need to kill this guy." and they don't need to be shown extra reasons. But Celebi is specifically a protector of the very things Giovanni was hurting - Pokémon. I imagine it gets a bit personal at that point.

On the other hand. You could assume Celebi was trying to help Ethan and Lyra understand Silver, and see that he needs support and someone to give him time, patience, a good smack to the back of the head sometimes, etc. If Celebi watches over the forest, and Silver is a homeless vagrant, it's likely that he slept in Celebi's forest for a time. Ilex has lots of big trees that can give a homeless teenager some shelter from the elements. It's not too wild to assume that, while he was there, Celebi took a shine to him and wanted to help him. I do think the fact that Celebi knows Silver is Giovanni's son is interesting on its own, because that implies he was important enough for Celebi to pay attention to, so if you take the softer Celebi personality as canon, it could have been out of genuine pity and concern for Silver, trying to convey to Lyra and Ethan that they shouldn't give up on him.

here's mickey, goofy, donald, and chip & dale. yeah they turned mickey & friends into anime boys. they're an idol unit or something. they're technically not anime boy versions of the source characters, they have different names. mickey's guy is "Neo Michel". not michael, michel, like he's french. chip & dale are "Ruska Moncrief" and "Ranka Monk", they have different last names, they're not brothers anymore so that they can be yaoibait instead, anyways this post isn't actually about these guys I'm just setting the stage for the actual humanizations I wanted to show you

They also did monsters inc. And. Well it's obvious from the designs who mike and sully are. but you will also notice. the blonde one on the left. with glasses. monsters inc is kind of famously about just the two guys so they didn't really have a lot of other non-villain characters to take anime boys inspiration from, I guess, so, well,