Honestly if I was being more critical as I'm going through HunterxHunter 2011, I would be ripping apart the art direction and general direction. The art direction is essentially mediocre with little sense of dramatic lighting or lighting in general. That said, this is a common complaint of most modern productions now anyways. I kind of see why it's done like this, in that the bright lighting facilitates the comedic tone the show is almost always striving towards. Watching this reminds me of FMA Brotherhood in that it brings up many of the Brotherhood criticisms. This is especially the case when you look at the art direction of the 1999 version in that the lighting makes that work generally look more serious. This is in addition to the exaggerated reaction faces and whatnot. Everything about the art direction is fairly basic such as the coloring, shading, or most of the background art. Case in point, the coloring is largely vibrant so as to reflect the 'energy' of the work however all the coloring in the show is like this so the palette can come across as somewhat monotone. I imagine another reason the staff took this stylistic approach too, besides the tone, was to make animation easier such as for the fights.
It's a fairly lighthearted story in how it's told even if there's a serious undercurrent in it. For example I literally did not know Kastro had died in his fight with Hisoka until episodes later because of how his final scene was presented. This has to do more with the general direction and pacing in that serious moments are kind of sped past or underplayed. This probably rubs some people the wrong way but I feel it works fine for being an action-adventure sort of story.
