honestly the best kind of shonen anime powerleveling for the protag is when you just get someone who is WAY stronger at them just... all-out pummeling the shit out of them until they start to catch up
gon then just... continues to go at it anyway for a while longer, for fun, until he finally forces netero to use his other hand to avoid him, at which point he starts cheering like he won the whole thing
the funniest part of the hxh example is Killua afterwards being like "I quit because if I kept going, I was going to get pissed off and kill that old man"
I also like how Killua would logically be the rival character in just about any other story but he and Gon are just really good friends who like spending time together and helping each other and Gon doesn't give a fuck that Killua is stronger than he is and also a murderer he just thinks he's neat
In this plurk