Gennai

Gennai keeps his dark brown hair cropped close and has dark eyes to match. His outfit is a high-collared brown suit paired with trousers of the same shade and a beige sash, and he wears a Konohagakure forehead protector on blue cloth in the conventional style.

Gennai wrestles with self-doubt about his chances of ever making chunin, and watching his teammate Komugi walk away from the exam only deepened that hesitation until he withdrew as well. At the same time, he shares his squad's tendency to overrate his own talent.

Gennai first entered the Chunin Exams as a member of Komugi's team, but when Komugi declined to finish the opening written phase, fearing Ibiki Morino's warning that a failed attempt could never be retaken, the whole squad was disqualified. Roughly two years on, he tried again at the joint exams that Konoha and Sunagakure ran together. Placed in the second room for the written stage overseen by Shikamaru Nara, his team scraped through by hitting the required combined total of a hundred points and leaving the bonus question blank. A crowded field forced a preliminary race across the country to Suna, and Gennai's group counted among the first thirty to arrive, a testament to the stamina and speed that had already carried him from Konoha to Suna in three days.

Temari opened the next stage inside the Demon Desert, where Gennai's team ran into Team Ajisai. He tried to loose a Fire Release attack but needed too long to prepare it and was cut off by Ajisai's paper-based technique. The team later cornered the same battered Ame kunoichi, only for Team Guy to intervene, Neji Hyuga arguing that no alliance holds in the exams beyond one's own squad. Outnumbered, Gennai's group pulled back. Controversy in that second stage ended the exams before the finals could begin, and rather than promote anyone directly, Gaara arranged for reports on each entrant to reach their village leaders. Tsunade later told Gennai he had not done enough and would have to wait until the following year.