Questionable Questing

Plotvitalnpc

Being taught by a jounin is, in this world, a sign that you were singled out as having the qualities necessary to develop the qualities necessary to be a chuunin - intelligence, the capacity for intimate teamwork, and the ability to foresee the consequences of your actions.

Plotvitalnpc

A sign that you're capable of being a member of Konoha's force that can be trusted with the lives of others, rather than entrusted to them. That you're more than just powerful, and that you might one day be capable of nurturing the talents of others to guide them down the same path. Which is what a jounin needs, strictly speaking.

Plotvitalnpc

Power isn't the primary selector for either, but is necessary. A special jounin is recognized as having the skill necessary to jounin up /one/ branch of skill in students.

Plotvitalnpc

For those who fail to place in their assigned team, three fates generally await. Taught by a special jounin, assigned to a semi-permanent chuunin led team (with little prospect of advancement or great gains in strength), or swept away into the general issue, communal training of the Genin Corps.

Plotvitalnpc

The faceless ninjas that aren't elite in any way, and get shuffled around.
Only way around that is getting adopted into a 3 person team after the fact, or made someone's personal apprentice, but the only likely way out is that a chuunin decides they want to prove their chops to become a jounin or toku-jou by polishing your dumb ass and those of two others.

Plotvitalnpc

If they attain the right status while the leader of that team, then they can choose to keep you. If they do, you're now back in the elite program you flunked out of so long ago!

Plotvitalnpc

It's all predicated on there not being nearly enough jounin to train every trio of genin hopefuls. You can even be a relatively normal semi-elite team with a toku-jou, and challenge the chuunin exam after a few years...but if they don't see the potential to swiftly become effective leaders and teachers in you, they don't have the resources to try and bring them out.

Plotvitalnpc

It's a long road or a hard one or a long, hard road to get reevaluated once you've fallen out of the elite program.

Plotvitalnpc

So called 'eternal genins' are more specifically 'eternal elite genins', those seen by the system to have potential as leaders, but who hold themselves back from official recognition because they feel unworthy.

Plotvitalnpc

If you're /just/ incredibly powerful, in theory there's no reason you shouldn't be in the genin corps. Actually putting that into practice can be politically complicated, but the idea /is/ that exclusive access to a top class training resource is for someone who's been singled out as likely to become one. Gotta perpetuate the cycle.

Plotvitalnpc

If there's one benefit to being down there, it's that what training is given out is from basically every angle, as teamless jounin and tokujou are hired for missions to give lectures and other lessons. It's the perfect place to discover talents by trying a little of literally everything. Shame you get so little help cultivating them.

Plotvitalnpc

...Unless you save up to hire someone for a period of private lessons.

daimahou

What about the cryptology department, the medic nin.. those who specialize but aren't likely to see combat (much)?

Plotvitalnpc

Generally, you're shuffled into their line of study before you finish the academy. But if you pass an apprenticeship with terms they set, after being chosen by them, you can go from the corps into their department. It's a way out, but not a way /up/, since by that point you're decidedly not on the elite track.

Plotvitalnpc

By specializing in such a field without being an elite, you remove yourself from the military hierarchy of 'genin, chuunin, jounin', and submit yourself to a separate internal hierarchy.

tehelgee

I'd disagree that it's a separate hierarchy. They're still genin or chunin under the command of the Hokage, but they're not part of mission corps anymore.