Update: 35 - IGA's Got A Brand New Background (New Shaders!)

As for the art direction itself, I really think that the stylized cel shaded look is going to be better in motion than the plain 3D model when restricted to a 2D plane.  If Shader 3 is an analogue to Guilty Gear, then Shader 1 is closer to Tekken, and as nice as the characters can look in that game, it looks really weird watching undisguised 3D characters walking back and forth with no 3D movement.

Then too, there's the issue of the art design and model.  Miriam is already a manga/anime style character by design.  She has been since the first piece of concept art(and for that matter so have almost all of the IGAVania characters).  Trying to put semi-realistic textures and lighting on that is far more of a mismatch than the current background and Shader 3 Miriam.  And that's assuming you can even see any of that detail.  Go look at the sized down pics on page 1.  At a smaller scale, all of those details disappear, and you're left a very plain low contrast looking model that just looks kind of flat like RWBY or a PS2 era JRPG.  Meanwhile, because it relies on high contrast shading for detail instead of finely detailed textures, Shader 3 still looks distinct and interesting when zoomed out.  It scales better.