Naruto Vol. 5
- ISBN
- 9781591163596
- Publisher
- Viz Media
- English release
- Pages
- 184
- Chapters
- 37–45
- Anime
- Season 1 (1st Stage) ep. 1–35
Where the series changes shape: the missions stop, the Chunin Exams begin, and the cast grows by two whole teams. Chapters 37 to 45 open with Team 7 meeting the rest of their graduating year, Team 8 and Team 10, and then sit every applicant down in front of a written paper. What follows is not a fight. The exam the volume is built around, 'The Tenth Question', is a decision taken sitting still, and 'The Talents We Test For' is the examiners saying afterwards what they were grading. A reader who came for the Land of Waves should know that the next several books are a tournament and its consequences. Viz lists 184 pages at $11.99, and 3-in-1 book 2 holds this one with Vols. 4 and 6.
Spoilers — why this volume matters. Tap to reveal.
The paper is a fraud, and that is the answer to it. Nine questions are set that almost nobody in the room can do, because the examiners are grading how well each applicant steals the answers without being seen taking them. Naruto neither cheats nor works out that he is meant to. He passes on the criterion the paper does not measure, which is the tenth question: withdraw now, or answer it and accept never being promoted if it is wrong. The people who walk out are the people the exam was built to remove. This is the register change the volume exists for. Up to chapter 36 the opponents were assassins and the tests were of effort and grief. From chapter 37 the opponents are other twelve-year-olds, the cast expands well past the three names the reader knows, and what is being measured is nerve. The second exam is announced in the last chapter, and the series does not take a paid job again for a long stretch.
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