Why are there so many ninjas if exams are only held once a year and only...

cafe_carl

In the (only yearly held!) genin and chunin exams only very few (if at all) ninjas pass. And the ones that do not pass maybe even die in the exams. Yet, there seem to be endless chunin and jonin in the course of the story. Just take the regular jonin, the anbu, the teachers, the count- and name-less one-shot-dead chunin. Just take the attack on the hidden leaf village when Naruto's first chunin exam was held. So many ninjas. Where did they came...

Originally asked by ldfjglfkgj on Stack Exchange (anime) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Variant 527.

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

It likely isn't explained and is an extremely common practice in fiction. Filler characters are written as needed all the time. If it helps your imagination, then just imagine that in some years there are large batches that pass the exams and in other years, small batches. You've only witnessed a year with the small batches that pass the exams. Not every detail needs a fleshed-out logical explanation in fiction, some can be left to the consumers to imagine for themselves. Cheers.

Full answer by KingAzion1232: https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/68964 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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