The father of the Zelda franchise, Shigeru Miyamoto, apparently didn’t like the design that Nintendo went with for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
This shift paved the way for its mobile games, keeping the Toon Link style for the spin-offs and mobile releases while retaining a more realistic look for the console games.
Miyamoto went ahead and “literally cringed” when he first saw the new style.
This was much to the chagrin of its creator and he was against the new style to the very end.