Hinowa, the weird uncle of the AgK universe mangas. Its ok, but it seems to be picking up pace in the latest chapters!

TLDR: Hinowa is a pretty flawed manga, that is loosely connected to AgK. If you've got an open mind it's worth checking out. If you are the type of person who cant stand any really big flaws and is thinking of just checking it out since you like AgK don't waste your time.

It doesnt even vaguely feel like AgK or AgKZ, and there are very few story links, as Akame herself has taken a spot in quite the backlines. So anyways - feel - Hinowa feels different to AgK in outright everything, the atmosphere is completely changed, the battles focus a lot on strategy and teamwork rather than the superpowered duels of AgK and teigu are nowhere to be seen. The artstyle is not a welcome change in my eyes, but to each their own. I think like half the characters look like strange frog creatures. Though the panels flow much better and the overall detail has been improved by a good amount.

There is also a genuine problem with sex scenes - yes really! "Sex scenes? That seems like such a menial thing to care about" you're thinking - exactly! It is! So imagine how bloody bad they must be for me to have to mention this! There is fanservice like *never before* in AgK and it's there constantly and it absolutely KILLS the tone every time this happens!! It's horrible, there are times where we get full three page scenes with different poses and ahegao not even 2 chapters apart! And my god is it uncomfortable! Strelka and Takahiro are some absurdly horny dudes! Luckily this dies down in the later chapters.

A welcome change is in the characters, there really isnt any moseying around with half-baked villains. From the get-go we get a much more colorful array of characters, and especially the villains, I was glad Hinowa skipped the filler kills and went straight towards well built-up intimidating people with plenty of quirks to their name who get a nice amount of time on-screen.

A big change in content shows up in the manga's latest 15 chapters, as the non-stop fighting stops and the characters split-up into 3 main storylines, and we start getting a nice picture of the inner workings of everything and everyone.

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Hinowa ga Crush is the spinoff/sequel to Akama ga Kill and Akame ga Kill Zero. The early sections of Hinowa ga Crush do make improvements over previous installments like better world building, slower pacing, and a better character work on certain characters. Throughout my time reading however I thought it was mostly mediocre, even during some of its best moments and by the end it just felt like a waste of time.

Problem is as time goes on, they introduced too many minor characters aside from the main group and the screentime and character work felt so spread thin between all of them to care about 1 singular character. The main group in particular got a lot of screentime early on, but as time went on, they felt like strangers who just met each other instead of the close friends there supposed to be and moving on too quickly after major losses. This manga also repeated a lot of the same writing mistakes of Akame ga Kill, but it felt more annoying and frustrating in Hinowa ga Crush because it's the 3rd instalment in the francize. Things like overreliance of shock factor over story and character development. Some characters even dying with unfinished character arcs just invalidated a lot of improvements made in the early sections of Hinowa ga Crush.

For this example, I am going into spoilers relating to the main character herself Hinowa. After losing a major battle Hinowas' reaction to losing a bunch of her friends, homeland and possibly the family of her remaining friends was "oh well time to move on", the reaction just felt so underplayed. It was a massive change in the world and almost immediately we are already setting a new goal and moving on. It felt too quick and underplayed for the massive shift, at least for the main groups' reaction. You could excuse this by saying it's a way to demonstrate how Hinowa is becoming more coldhearted and adjusting to the battlefield. But even that feels too rushed in the context of the story especially when she goes back to smiling a couple of chapters later.

Akame herself is in this manga and is one of the few saving graces. Despite Hinowa and her groups storyline getting better in latter chapters I found it boring in comparison to Akames' storyline. The idea of Akame, a child soldier trying to find happiness while at the same time only finding fulfillment on the battlefield is interesting, but again not enough time is dedicated to it or any of her remaining plotlines relating to the Akame ga kill and Akame ga Kill zero characters.

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