Why Isn't Naruto Older Than His Friends?

Why isn't Naruto older than his friends? He failed the ninja academy graduation exam 3 times, and yes, he is younger than Sasuke, Sakura, and many other members of the Konoha 11. What gives? Did Naruto enroll in the Ninja Academy before the others? Did Naruto just take 3 exams on a whim? Did Mizuki or Iruka have anything to do with it?

In this video we'll try to solve on of Naruto's strangest plot holes that was created in the very first chapter of the Naruto Manga and episode of the Naruto Anime.

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[DygoKnight]

What's the biggest Naruto Plot Hole?

[thelegendarymarioman]

My headcanon is that he tried to graduate early but failed twice that's why he really was trying to succeed this time because his classmates where going to graduate before him

[TheLyingFigure]

I always assumed you just get multiple attempts to pass, maybe over the course of a few days where they test students and he just failed it 3 times. It fits his character to volunteer to be the first to try so when he failed more of his class took the test, he gave it another attempt and failed then more of his class went through the test and then he failed for the final time.

[potterpal]

This is unfortunately common with Kishimoto. This is similar to another plot hole when it says Kakashi passed the chunin exams at age 6, but then we se him taking the exams at the same time as his classmates.

[aceclover]

Someone said in in another video but it’s likely the same as the Japanese failure grade system
From what I read, you can fail the year but still past the grade. You will just be given special classes because logically it makes sense
Someone passing or failing by 1 point doesn’t mean much

[Ironman]

It's really simple, we are talking about an exam not the whole year, they give an academy student to try the graduation exam as many times as they want, until they either give up or succeed, Naruto kept retaking the test and failed 2 more times beyond what we saw on screen, and than Mizuki came to him telling him to steal the scroll.

[vorobuh_the_]

Naruto seems like the kinda guy to try the hardest exam every time he is allowed to without studying at all regardless of previous failure

[Megamanthemachine]

I think Naruto had genuine talent as spotted by other teachers the thing is naruto quite literally trained even before sasuke to get any form of acknowledgment despite knowing that the village didn’t like him he wanted to prove to himself that he could reach where sasuke was at that’s why we see Naruto’s regrets of not trying to connect with sasuke when sasuke needed someone.

[jayb]

It’s likely that there’s a “standard” age when you’re expected to graduate and most students just do it then, but students are allowed to attempt to graduate whenever they want to. Naruto, always wanting to prove himself, likely attempted the exam at every possible opportunity.

[solitude]

Good question. The most realistic answer is it being simply a plot hole. We can just speculate that Naruto started earlier than others or something like that. I always liked to believe Naruto was 1-2 years older than others. Other stuff part of plot hole is Kakashi and mainly Jiraya not giving a damn about Naruto for long time. Which is quite damaging for their characters.

[odd-eyes]

It's like a driving exam. You can attempt it multiple times in the same year, has nothing to do with the school system you are probably familiar with given that Naruto is japanese and being a Shinobi is more similar to being a public worker than a school graduate

[ghqebvful]

I always just thought Naruto bugged the teachers for early graduation exams, because he wanted to be the cool kid that everyone looked up to - but because he didn't really train that much at that time and wasn't skilled from the start he failed, twice, and then again on screen.

[JaydenFuller]

I mean it has been stated as long as you complete all of the courses required that you can graduate the academy like we see with Itachi graduating at 7 and Kakashi at 5. It would make sense that you can graduate/take the exam at any time, meaning that Naruto could’ve simply just attempted the test multiple times, whether that means within the same year or even attempting in years that his other classmates didn’t.

[dylanmiller]

Honestly the thing that gets me is Naruto's inconsistent stealth. Chapter one paints the hokage monument, and only gets caught after he was done, perfectly dodges most of his persuers, a teacher that knew him for years was the one that caught him non of the other ninja caught him, he steals the scroll of seals, heavily gaurded document, then hide from his persuers which should include trackers like inuzuka and even hyuga, and once again Iruka was the one that finds him. Then chapter 2 got caught peeping because his transformation was just 12 year old naruko, doesn't even change out of his jump suit. Then next he perfectly imitates Sasuke until the bad milk hits. After that he doesn't even try to hide from kakashi, and he would be the one most likely to succeed based on his highs. Then starts to successfully hide with clones and transformations and clones in several big fights. Then Shippuden where he seems to completely forget about stealth, messes up that sai can't use rasangan in a mock diversion even suggesting smashing orochimaru's walls with a rasangan. Worst part about Shippuden is that he had spent 2.5 years training with a spy master, I know he wasn't being trained in stealth but knowing this still erks me, at least let the guy not let his stealth go into the negatives after all those feats.

[Greater_L]

My theory is Naruto forced Sarutobi into giving him early exams and the 3rd hokage humored him.

[gtd]

Japan just has a different graduation system. There is an answer in the Itachi novels, and I know lots fans don't consider it canon, but I'll post the explanation anyways.

"While Itachi was in the academy, the third war just ended but there was still tension. Itachi was allowed to take the exam 4 months after starting the academy. When he passed, he had to wait until the end of the school year to participate in the graduation ceremony which is why it took Itachi a year opposed to Kakashi’s few months. It wasn’t because of a skill difference.
While Sasuke and Naruto were in the academy, Hiruzen forbade students to graduate early no matter how talented you are. This rule wasn’t a thing while Itachi was a student. So any student can take the exam whenever the teacher thought they were ready but all of them would have to wait until they were 11-12 no matter what." - Anonymous

[fatboysergio]

There's actually multiple explanations, such as Japan having a 3 semester years with 1 test per semester. The graduation requirement was to make 3 clones, 1 per test. Also students aren't allowed to graduate early since there's no active wars during Naruto's school time, so anyone could have taken it early but still have to wait till the end of the year

[AxleBoost]

I do think this was an unintentional plothole, but I can easily see Naruto trying to graduate early multiple times for several reasons.

- He was hotheaded and overconfident, although this was in part a front he employed to cover up insecurity
- Everyone in class looked down on him, so he might have thought passing early would prove they should respect him more
- Maybe he just wanted to leave and go on missions earlier as an escape route from all of the mistreatment and teasing in class. We see him not valuing the importance of his studies at all. That on top of his classmates being horrible to him would for sure make him wish he could get away.
- He wanted to become Hokage and probably saw this as a way to shine a light on himself as the ideal candidate
- Minato had basically the best performance in the academy alongside Itachi, so Naruto probably wanted to emulate The Fourth Hokage

[Dumbsourplum]

"Neji is all about destiny, you cannot escape your destiny"

and he was right, Naruto was Ninja Jesus while Neji was just a mere podigy of the weakest dojutsu, Naruto was an Uzumaki, the reincarnation of Ashura, the child prophesized to save the
whole world from war and the cycle of revenge and unite it, Neji died protecting him and His future wife who would give birth to his extremely talented son, he couldn't escape destiny, Destiny bound him for life

[schris]

Considering Itachi graduated at 6 years old, there's not much of age restrictions on how young they can be to present the exams, so the question should be on why Naruto's generation didn't graduated earlier (especially Sasuke), especially due to their talent. Probably because for almost two decades after the last war, peace was taking over Konoha, especially their youth. So is likely the Konoha 11 weren't in a hurry to present their exams. And about Sasuke, remember that he always got low marks in the cooperation portion of the test, and proctors might have been reluctant to approve Sasuke despite his obvious talent as an Uchiha.