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MusubiKazesaru2026-01-20 01:09
It depends on what you want to count. Yu Yu Hakusho probably started the modern incarnation of it with the Genkai Tournament, but before that you have the trials of the Bronze Saints to earn their cloths in Saint Seiya and before that the Budokai Tenkaichi in Dragon Ball, which had preliminaries as an additional round.
There's also Sakigake!! Otokojuku which actually wound up codifying a few shounen tropes and had some internal school type exams though unofficial ones. It came out between DB and SS.
You could also argue some sports series did it even earlier.
Vast-Coffee-70582026-01-20 03:08
I think the true origin was the Chojin Olympic preliminaries in **Kinnikuman**.
MusubiKazesaru2026-01-20 04:57
I was considering Kinnikuman to be slightly under the umbrella of sports, but it's not a series I'm particularly familiar with so I didn't name drop it.
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There's also Sakigake!! Otokojuku which actually wound up codifying a few shounen tropes and had some internal school type exams though unofficial ones. It came out between DB and SS.
You could also argue some sports series did it even earlier.