To clarify, the only real start bias I had was that I didn't watch it until now because I'm not a fan of the art style.
I will mostly talk about the story since that's what I see praised the most but I'll go over the different points that MAL uses.
Story: To summerize what I thought about the story; It started good at gradually became worse, reaching the bottom at the later stages of the Chimera Ant arc. There will be a lot of indirect spoilers, so if you want to be spoiler free don't read further than the first part.
The first arc, Hunter exam arc, was actually very interesting especially since I have read/watched many long mainstream battle shounen such as Naruto and One Piece. It's very clear how they influenced each other and share a lot of traits which I found very interesting to examine, in fact Hunter x Hunter might be the basis for the Naruto Chuunin exam arc, however I'm not sure which was published as manga first. We realise there's a lot of different types of hunters and we see some cool creatures in this fantasy world, I'm a big fan of the big turtle/dinosaurs. This is the only arc I would classify as a fantasy adventure. I had trouble understanding why people would call HxH a masterpiece but at least at this point I liked it.
Then there's the Heaven's Arena arc, where the shit begins. The story stops being anything about adventure, now it's just fantasy battle. The battles are more or less pointless, the only purpose is to train the main characters power like going to the gym or pressing the "Train" button in an sim dating game.
We are introduced to "Nen", which is actually very confusing at this point because we've seen nothing at all to it until this point. They're introducing a very abstract and foreign concept where only one of the 4 concepts Nen consists of has any exposure before this and only very little in Gon's usage of zetsu.
Then Nen is divided into 6 categories and then there's a persons unique Nen ability... Then there's the advanced Nen techniques etc etc etc... It feels like an endless addition to a battle system which is made up on the spot.
From this point everything besides Nen basically becomes irrelevant which is honestly a shame.
Yorknew city arc starts very interesting, but towards the end it gets really silly and bad. The Phantom Troupe which is supposed to a group of the worst criminals in the world actually fights for the power of friendship and ends up sacrificing more than the main cast to save the lives of their friends... I don't have an issue with the power of friendship, but it's not very cool and intimidating when they care more about their friends than the main characters. This was probably to show that the bad guys aren't flat 100% evil people but in this case I just found it lame. Besides that we are also introduced to more useless characters.
Lastly I'm going to talk about the Chimera Ant arc. Honestly, I think this is the worst of any anime I've ever watched. It starts quite interesting by being dark and almost apocalyptic. However it quickly just feels out of place in this bright anime where friendship prevails and leads to 0 consequences. However it switches rapidly between overly serious and extremely silly which I at least found very disturbing. One moment we got chimera ants trying to take over the world where the cast considers if they should be treated humanely or as monsters (which was done poorly imo) and then we got some of the monsters with abilities called sexy stinger and the last bosses having an orgasm while they feed their liquid (Nen) to their leader for 10 minutes.
The pacing was monsterous slow, even worse than the worst parts of mainstream anime. The narrator made it a living hell, explaining everything pointless and the arc included so much useless information. It clearly felt like this arc was drawn out to be as long as possible.
Art: Honestly I'm not a fan of the art. The art style/character design is older and very simple, which is something I don't like. Gon has a nose sharp enough to cut fruit, the characters pretty much wear the same clothing 24/7 and their style is imo too simple, plain and boring. There was never a point where I thought "Hey this design is pretty cool" or something similar. The colouring in the anime in general is pretty nice though.
The animation is good in general and better during important fights, but especially towards the end there's tonnes of loops and still images which only serve to keep the budget low and extend the episodes to be as long as possible.
Sound: I think the soundtracks are good, very good in fact. However I think they're used very poorly and there's not very many. Maybe this is due to not paying attention but I can only remember around 6 soundtracks, which were played over and over. Something which especially annoyed me was the soundtrack they played every time Nen was involved.
The voice actors did good though and sfx was also good.
Characters: I like some of the characters but aside from this, I think the characters are quite poorly done, especially Gon. (For reference I liked Hisoka, Illumi & Killua)
Gon is very straight forward like most shounen MCs however he's slightly different because he's far more childish (and stupid). His stupidity is on a different level which made me hope that the other characters would somehow break him so he could learn. But no. Every stupidity he performs is rewarded and comes without any real consequences. During the hunter exam he refuses to give up despite being totally outclassed and threatened with getting every limb broken? Break all his limbs and spit him in the face please. Not giving up can also trying again even if you fail rather than just being stupid. Also during the Greed Island arc. There's a plan to defeat the Bomber (who is equally silly) but let's not follow it and lose an arm first before following the plan. And then the arm regrows because magic!.. And then when he becomes angry and big, the consequences of doing that are alsog one because of... MAGIC! Or well basically because of magic. Everything he experiences and mistakes he makes are without consequences, even what happens to Kite is reversed in the end...
Gon doesn't grow, he's equally stupid and irresponsible during the entire anime. Also his early defining traits are totally gone later in the anime. First of all, his fishing rod is magically gone after the Heaven's Arena arc which was one of the things that made him unique. Secondly his ability to hide due to his upbringing in the nature is non existant after Yorknew City. You could at least make him enhance his fishing rod.
Then there's Killua. I actually like Killua, he's actually thinking. He actually grows a bit, learns about friendship and how to take risks (or at least they say). However like Gon he begins to lose his individuality, just not as much. During the Greed Island arc for instance he pulls out his yo yos which we've never seen before. Then after he learns to use his lightning properly then RIP yo yo's. His past as assassin doesn't influence how he fights during the later parts of the series which I think is a shame. He was exposed to electricity torture as a kid so his power is electricity! Feels a bit silly imo. Also why not like use the lightning with the yo yos?
And then we got the rest of the cast where most are irrelevant to anything besides the single arcs they got any real screen time.
I think a lot of potential was wasted overall with the characters.
Enjoyment: Some parts were more enjoyable than others. During the especially bad parts I had to look actively for bad stuff to be able to find any kind of entertainment or enjoyment in the anime.
Extra stuff: I read a lot of people say they enjoy the strategy in the fights, but having the characters/narrator explaining what happened after the action doesn't make it into strategy/tactics.
This anime was the most extreme case of people explaining their abilties, strategies and etc. to the enemy. There was even a character with an ability which required to know the name of another's ability. Why would you even need to name your abilities?
Also the anime even encourages to defy logical solutions and plans. The characters might say their plans are super important to follow and should be priority but pretty much all characters don't follow the plan and act on emotion.
Overall: Well since the worst arc (Chimera Ant arc) imo filled around 40% of the anime I would say overall Hunter x Hunter is bad 3 or 4/10. If we talked about actual content and not in terms of amount of episodes it would be a lot higher. Aside from that arc I would say HxH is alright, but definitely not a masterpiece. It is everything I see people complain about when it comes to other anime. If you think it's a masterpiece, you're not wrong, I'm just unable to understand why.
To sound like a review I would recommend this to people who like Index. It shares a lot of the same problems imo but a lot of people also like index so maybe what I consider a problem is a virtue to others.
