the first phase, he and his team-mates met with their old classmates of Team 7 and Team 8 until the written exams begun. After Ino cheated off of Sakura's test answers using Mind Body Switch Technique, she went into Shikamaru and his body to pass on the answers to them. They ended up passing regardless because the true test was to overcome pressure and intensity.

Chōji attacking Zaku.

During the second phase of the Chūnin Exams, Chōji was reluctant to join his team in helping Sakura fend off a team of Oto genin, fearing for his own safety, and continuously asking to run. However, when Zaku Abumi called Chōji "fatso", Chōji proceeded to go berserk as he defended his size, and yelled that Konoha and the Sound ninja were nowat war. Properly motivated, Chōji fought against the Oto genin, but were unable to defeat them. His actions, however, bought time until Sasuke Uchiha awakened and forced them to retreat with the power of the Cursed Seal.

Chōji gets stuck in the wall, ending in his defeat.

In the preliminaries of the exam, Chōji began feeling hesitant about fighting, but Asuma convinced him to fight, promising to treat him to barbecue if he won, and to intervene if he was in danger. In the last match of the preliminaries, Chōji was matched against Dosu Kinuta. At the start of the match, Ino Yamanaka yelled to him that he was fat, so that he would be spurred into fighting. Figuring Dosu's sound based attack won't work on him if he doesn't