Genin Takedown! All Nine Rookies Face Off!

Before Team 7 steps into the examination hall, Kakashi catches them to explain a catch he had kept quiet: none of them would have been allowed inside unless every member had chosen to compete. He sees them off with a word of luck. Inside, the nine rookies from Konoha find one another and fall into loud, excited chatter, until a helpful older candidate, Kabuto Yakushi, urges them to lower their voices before they provoke the seasoned ninja packed around them.

Kabuto walks the group through how the exams work and pulls out his Ninja Info Cards, feeding Sasuke details on both Gaara and Rock Lee. He warns that nearly everyone in the room is an elite drawn from their home village, a claim that rattles the newcomers. Naruto shrugs off the nerves by loudly declaring he will not fall to anyone, drawing a mix of alarm and irritation from the crowd. Stung by Kabuto's dismissal of their home as an insignificant village, three ninja from the Sound lunge at him; his glasses shatter and nausea overtakes him even though the blow appears to miss. The chief proctor, Ibiki Morino, arrives with his staff to halt the outburst, and the first stage of the exams gets underway.

This episode is part of the Chunin Exams arc and adapts chapters 38 through 40. Background candidates can be spotted wearing forehead protectors from the Cloud and Mist even though neither village fields any genin here. The sound effect used for the Sound-nin's strike would later be reused as the noise of the Rasengan. The Japanese broadcast landed on March 13, 2003, with the English airing on February 11, 2006.