Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-31278419-20170309233927

We know that genin have to take the chuunin exams to rank up, but we really don't see a standard really set. Shikimaru was the only one who passed the chuunin exams due to his intellect, at least as far as we know the sand siblings may have ranked up after. Still with Shikimaru being the only one to pass one would expect that chuunin ranks and above to be really smart and strong. Except their not like at all.

The the most killed mooks in the series are the anbu black ops who are supposed to be the best of the best pulled out of those from jonin ranks. People like Kakashi, Itachi, and Yamamoto were all anbu at some point due to their skill. Might Gai who is arguably stronger then all three was not an anbu member. Nor was Asuma who was one of the guardian shinobi twelve. Yet we get these lemmings who literally ram their bodies into a barrier, catch fire, and die during the chuunin exam arc. The anbu are nothing for almost anyone to take down.

I know we can't focus on every single ninja and build them up, but come on why are so many chuunin and above so seemingly god awful that they're at best a two second distraction or at worse papermache for everyone to plow through? They don't just rank up after a set amount of time since we saw some pretty old genin taking the exam, so the number of missions may not matter either. Strength doesn't seem to matter for Naruto didn't get a rank up even after taking on Pein which still boggles my mind since he's clearly stronger then everyone in the village at that point save Might Gai. Almost all of the konoha nine save ino and sakura during the exam were strong enough to beat chuunin rank ninja, and some were likely even able to beat jonin and anbu ranked shinobi as well from the piss poor performances we've seen. Hell Shikimaru held of how many chuunin/jonin rank shinobi in the chase after Gaara? You'd think that an invading force would know to watch out for the various clans that make Konoha so strong, but no he caught em all and yes he'd have died without Asuma showing up, but he still managed to easily catch higher rank shinobi who had been planning the attack likely for months. 