All this meta on Hinoka makes me so mad at Treehouse for fucking everything up. Fans think she's just a streotypical tomboy (possibly a workaholic, but they don't care) but in the Japanese she's so messed up??? She has no meaningful relationships with people and she has this weird sort of emotional immaturity that's not being bratty like Takumi but is present in how she tries to save dying people and how she still thinks that Corrin's good in Conquest and she feels really naive overall.

Okay, I agree. I do think they were trying to do something good (look at me, excusing Treehouse, who am I?) by actually eliminating the gender roles that Hoshido has. Even though, those are actually integral to how some characters are (like Kazahana and Kagerou), and explains a lot about Hoshido. It actually lends some development to the country that we know literally nothing about, as unfortunate as that is. 

Hinoka unfortunately stereotyped as the tomboy really does detract from her character. She is just as complex as the rest of the cast, it just means you need to read into what she’s saying, and listen to what she says. Shocking! Again, like I always say, it’s not all laid out for you like the Nohrians. Maybe that’s why people love them so early on because we have everything early on. We don’t have to read into text and figure out half truths and actually try to pay attention to a Hoshidan other than Takumi. By Treehouse pushing her into only one role, instead of the many she encompasses, way to make her even more irrelevant and sidelined than she already was.

But, yes, exactly. Hinoka has no emotional attachments, apart from her pegasus and her older brother. She rejects her step mother, loses her father and birth mother, cuts herself off from her other siblings. She has no friends, even to her retainers she honestly displays no sense of care for, as she states to Hinata that they can quite literally do what they want because “they won’t listen to me anyway”. The only person we know of that she has somewhat of a friendship with is Tsubaki, who is also the retainer of her younger sister. Their only interaction was early on in her life when they were training to be knights. Does Hinoka honestly trust anyone in her life, other than herself and Ryouma. At least with Ryouma, they are both working towards the ultimate goal of saving Kamui. I guess that’s why they are so close because they both want the same thing. 

Hinoka is so weirdly well adjusted to everything, and yet it’s like one misstep for her, and everything will fall. Which is why in Birthright, she isn’t the one to bring Kamui home and you can see it affect her. All that training, and Kamui came home some other way. It wasn’t her who saved Kamui. There’s that hero complex ticking away in her, ready to explode. So she makes up for it by extending the suffering of soldiers in an attempt to save them, because she failed her life’s goal. At least in Conquest and Revelations, she has that second chance to take Kamui back. Her goal hasn’t been completed yet! She still can save her sibling!

Kamui to Hinoka will always be the good little sibling they remember vaguely from when they were a child. That image of course has been warped over the years, a single figure in the distance as she trains. Honestly, does she actually remember anything physically significant about Kamui? Probably not. Kamui is… quite literally like a god to Hinoka, just out of reach, but she’d follow to the ends of the Earth for. She’s gotta fix her family and sate her hero complex and reach Kamui. That’s it. But it’s so much more than that.

She was unfortunately typecast as a tomboy, and no one will ever realise just how deep her regret and guilt and need runs.