While I agree with the general goal of this post, it is absolutely misleading. I'll preface my gamer-rant by saying I love the art style of every Metal Slug, because I love the characters themselves, so no shade on anyone who prefers one over the other.
The TLDR is that both these images are cherry picked, and the Metal Slug characters were always intended to be conventionally attractive. The 2nd image was taken from a modern gacha game, and the 1st was taken from the earliest games and ignores the history and plot of the franchise.
This is the character select screen from the first 3 Metal Slug games. It's important to note that the images used for these characters are specifically intended to be ugly caricatures, BECAUSE THEY ARE PROPAGANDA POSTERS. For those who have never played, the plot of several MS games revolves around combat between two armies, The 'Regular Army', which our protagonists belong to, and the antagonist 'Rebel Army'.
In lore, these character portraits are made by the Rebel Army to insult and satarize the protagonist's image, and are ugly on purpose. As early as Metal Slug 4, the characters are depicted as more conventionally attractive and in an anime style. Highlighted here is the same character in the images above, Fio.
This is also ignoring spin off games. Metal Slug 2nd Mission, which came out between Metal Slug 2 and 3, also depicts its female character in a cutesy anime style.
I'm not going to defend the changes to Fio's design for the gacha game depiction, because I personally don't care for it, nor do I play Metal Slug Awakening. BUT it is important to note that the Metal Slug characters were always intended to be conventionally attractive, and this is not some radical change.
If you are interested in getting into the series, Metal Slug Tactics is supposed to be released later this year, and looks to be more true to the series roots! Please also consider going back and playing the originals, they've had several remakes over the years and are very enjoyable even by modern standards.
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