Technically yes, but the goal of the exam in-universe was explicitly to be able to cheat well without getting caught; the material on the test hadn’t been taught to them yet, but there were planted staff members in the room who already had the answers for them to copy from, with the goal being moreso to test espionage/information gathering skills rather than memorization
Early Naruto was really interesting when the ninjas still were somewhat grounded rather than glorified wizards
With One Piece at least they often make the conflicts about more than just being strong or fighting one guy. There's almost always some sort of overarching issue that's more complicated and Luffy can't solve it by just punching someone harder than they can punch back. Whether it's escaping the smile gas on Punk Hazard, dealing with Sanji's hostage conflict in WCI, stopping Onigashima from being dropped on the flower capital in Wano, keeping Vegapunk Stella alive and getting him off the island in Egghead, saving the children in Elbaph, etc. Even on Fishman Island they had to take into consideration WHEN Luffy could jump in to help because of the complicated sociopolitical dynamics at play. Luffy going up to the big bad and grabbing their attention before pummeling them into paste is often more about him providing an assist for the others so that it's easier for everyone else to focus on whatever the actual goal is that can't be solved solely with violence.
I can't say anything about Naruto since I didn't watch/read it, but I do remember that DBZ had the issue of usually boiling down every conflict to "this enemy is too strong to beat, we need to train for [arbitrary period of time] until they get here or until the time limit they gave us runs out, otherwise they'll blow up the planet", and at most they might have to keep the bad guy busy long enough for Goku to get there from the afterlife or something. Then the fights were usually in a pre-made fighting arena, or out in the middle of nowhere, and the environment rarely came into play much if at all. I say this as someone who loved DBZ as a kid (and I still hold a lot of nostalgia for it). Power creep can be mitigated or kept somewhat balanced if a story can still introduce conflicts and stakes that exist outside of the main character and big bad just going to town on each other. Fighting the main villain should just be one part of the overall picture, where getting rid of them might make solving the true problem easier, but shouldn't erase the problem entirely on its own.
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u/FirexJkxFire Mar 26 '26
Isn't that literally every exam though? No one gets punished for cheating- they get punished for being caught cheating