The world building in Toriko is legitimately so good, and the power crawl is I kid you not probably the best I have ever seen in a shonen and these are SO related guys
Like Toriko shows up and you know he and the others are the Four Heavenly Kings and you THINK this means they're the Most Powerful Dudes Ever right but turns out that, no, they're literally just the IGO darlings because they're a bunch of orphans raised in the public eye and they ARE powerful, regular people understand that, but people don't get that they're STILL the IGO darlings -- at the beginning of the show none of them would stand a chance against Ichiryu or any of the other higher ups.
They're still very much seen as Babies and this is driven in when they reveal OHOHO there's a whole gourmet world out there that most people can't survive five seconds in--and guess what the 4 heavenly kings are NOT among the number who can. Gives them a goal, something to work towards.
ALSO usually the worst thing to do in a fantasy world is start throwing arbitrary power levels on things (7 deadly sins, DBZ I am looking at YOU) but Toriko does it and it works because they give a basic, easy meaning for each unit (capture level 1 means it would take 10 normal people to get it or something) and then it sticks to that (I think the highest we ever see is the Final Boss of the manga with a capture level of 30,000 which is a ton but sure is evocative)
And this isn't just done with the fighter people either! Komatsu gets this just as much, and it's probably one of my favorite world building things because they use our knowledge of the real world against us as readers to achieve it. Komatsu is introduced as a cook in a five star restaurant and obviously we're like "aha so he's a very good chef" only to reveal several arcs in that, in this food-focused world, the cap is actually ten stars and Komatsu is actually a solidly mid ranked chef at the start.
There are so many more things because the worldbuilding of Toriko is in turns mind-blowingly brilliant and absolutely unhinged and I love that but basically they do an amazing job managing the audience's expectations by leveraging our knowledge of the real world and tropes commonly used in similar media to set up and then pulling the rug out from under us and I love it.
