Whenever i think about Kakashi and Itachi's promotional ages i always feel a little sick, 'cuz i always try to imagine it XD i try to think of little five year old kakashi getting approved of and allowed to go on missions and i think of itachi who had to murder his entire clan sans his brother when he was like 13 and i just cant picture that happening here and now XD but in the narutoverse it'd probably be weird but also like not that that weird? I'm not sure how to explain it, 12 is already young enough as genin but five?? some people would be weirded the fck out but there are also probably a few who are like "huh. that's pretty young... Anyways-"
There are definitly those who brush it off, like Minato who trained Kakashi and Choza who had a seven year old Gai on his team.
I mean, the genin age I don't cringe as much at cuz they do D rank missions which are non fighting missions inside the village.
It's when Minato takes a six year old Kakashi onto an actually dangerous mission in the lost tower movie
Or they promote Kakashi to chunin age six (when he'd start taking more dangerous missions outside the village) that I really cringe. I mean, it's gross that they would have a five year old doing work at all cuz that's a whole level of fucked up, but chasing cats and helping old ladies isn't bad. A genin's job is to train to get better and help the villagers in their village. Not to do dangerous missions (Hiruzen caving to Naruto's complaints was just being a piss poor Hokage but also story telling purposes cuz people would get bored with the constant d rank missions we would see and the training (hence why we rarely ever actually see then train)
But then the village turns around and decides things like 'ahh yes, this six year old will make a great chunin.' or 'this 11 yr old would be perfect for leading dangerous missions and being the captain over full grown adults' or 'this 11 and 13 yr old is perfect for anbu' and my favourite (sarcasm) let's convince this 13 yr old to murder his entire clan cuz we're afraid of them and don't want to treat them like human beings.
The Konoha system was really f***ed up and I would have liked to see a lot of things change. They could have still had the Hokage's and still made actual meaningful change but Kishi decides to just...not