Title: Hinowa ga CRUSH! Vol. 6
Author: Takahiro (Story), strelka (Art)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 258
Genre: Action
Publication Date: April 26, 2022
The Story
The battle over Nagisa castle continues in volume six of Hinowa ga CRUSH! News of HIsame’s death has spread as Zuou’s forces continue to press onward. Even with Hinowa’s squad and Akame’s incredible might, they are unable to subdue Zuou’s forces and the castle fell.
Realizing it was a losing battle, they made for the sea with some casualties along the way (one I was particularly happy about, haha!). Here, they are picked up in boats by Saiha where they regroup and read a scroll left behind by the Elder.
Meanwhile, Zuou has taken Princess Rinzu as his fifth wife and returned home to Tenrou. Here, he relishes in his victory. The volume comes to an end with multiple parties looking to enact their plans with one goal in mind: to kill Zuou!
Characters
With this being a volume mainly rooted in action scenes, there wasn’t much in the way of character development outside of a couple of instances.
Without spoiling too much, we finally learn the true name of the elder, who he used to be, and what his significance was in both Hinowa’s growth as well as his past with Zuou. It was a pretty interesting development and he even proposed a grand plan for Hinowa which could help her take down Zuou once and for all. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
Princess Rinzu is absolutely crushed and heartbroken over learning of Hisame’s death; however, after being captured, she too is explained of a way to get her revenge and even though she’s unsure of herself, she creates an iron will within herself to see the plan through! Through her, a second threat to Zuou’s life becomes apparent!
A third threat now comes from Suzumaru. While he does escape, he decides that he’s going to enact a plan to take down Zuou by switching sides and sabotaging Tenrou from the inside. Because they killed one of the ten stars during the battle, he sees it as a vacancy that he will try to fill. Then, using that power, he’ll get close to Zuou and assassinate him.
We also get to see more of Zuou himself and the kind of man he is. Crazed, lusting for power, craving domination, with an insatiable sexual appetite, Zuou is the very definition of a low-class pig masquerading as the highest authority of a nation; however, despite all of his talk, and actions, he seems pretty powerless. He never really got his hands too dirty during combat and it was stated that it’s impossible to get close to him in some situations as he always has guards and ninjas protecting him. This tells me that he’s quite vulnerable should he let his guard down and with the kind of massive ego he possesses, it seems pretty easy for him to become overconfident and slip up sooner or later. When he does, which one of the three plans will succeed?
Final Thoughts
Once again, there was a tremendous amount of amazing action in this volume which left the story a bit on the short side; however, a lot of the developments in the battle served as the main story points and offered some nice progression. I only touched upon them because with the battle concluding, a lot of those story points could be spoilers and I didn’t feel like littering this review with a bunch of [REDACTED] tags.
Some interesting scenarios were set up here and there are a few branching paths that the story could take; however, the problem is that the path with the most bravado… aka… the one given the biggest amount of spotlight, is the one that will most likely play out meaning that the other two will probably fail.
Given the nature of this entire series and how people die left and right without warning… I’m pretty sure two of these paths are going to fail and end in some more beloved characters getting killed off. Takahiro is really trying to show George R.R. Martin how it’s done!
Still, it was another exciting volume that makes me want to see what is to come in the next installment!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press.
