- #1
While a lot of this series is a 'training arc', the tower is one of the largest qualitative jumps in his abilities. He is thrown against something at a far higher level than him, but this still works since even the character acknowledges that it was carefully crafted with the tools needed to succeed.
Even that only leaves him at the first step where he moves from being a kid that hunts as a hobby to a serious combatant. The series does well to show that humans in the setting are still dangerous to him by putting him against a serial killer- someone strong enough to be a threat, but not a powerhouse that could rampage without fear.
Unfortunately, the setting with humans doesn't keep up well after that. They introduce an A rank team- but they are set up as being rare and special, since even a high ranking guild only has a single team like that. Which is disappointing, since they don't even go through a single dungeon before they get put to the side as bench warmers gawking at the protagonist solving the problem.
This culminates in a series of threats across three dungeons that each present a threat about 2x higher level than the last.
[collapse]This needed to breath in the B and A rank power levels for a while longer so we could feel that normal humans aren't the absolute strongest in the country could really do... well anything of significance. Going back to the DBZ comparison, he needed to wade around in the Ginyu force level threats for a while before rushing off to face Frieza. That way, you could feel more pressure from guild politics that were hyped up as a threat early on.The series might have been more effective if level was simply ignored after a certain point, and no one cared about anything other than pragmatic issues like weird abilities that they have to get around.
