Although originally considering a job in the film industry, the works of manga legends Shigeru Sugiura and Yoshiharu Tsuge inspired the young Hino to express himself in the medium of manga instead.
In 1993 he made a film of Yoshiharu Tsuge's manga, Master of the Gensenkan Inn (Gensenkan Shujin), and in 1998 he filmed Tsuge's avant-garde manga, Wind-Up Type (Nejishiki).