There are two considerations.
1) Variety / cultivar
2) The shape and structure of the actual plant
Yes, 'Hino Crimson' can be made into a bonsai. But among the 10 000 or so varieties, I don't think it is among the best. But that also all depends on what you look for in the variety.
The nice things about Hino Crimson are that the flowers are small. Same is true for the leaves. The plant is very winter hardy. It probably has nicer bark than most other azalea (kurume often have rougher bark while satsuki have very smooth bark).
The downsides are that the flowers are boring. Only a single colour. The flower shape is less neat. The branching and backbudding is decent, but not as compact. It likely does not backbud at all naturally on longer empty branches, namely on bare branches in between nodes. On coarse vs fine growth, it is a bit more on the 'fine growth' scale.
For the specific individual, for a nursery plant you would like to observe the specific trunk structure. It may have 7 branches or more, all equal in thickness, coming from the soil line. That would limit you to a plant with 7 equal trunks and no taper on them. And a bit of a challenge to get foliage to grow back on the lower areas of these trunks. But you get a carpet of red on your tree.
The reason satsuki azalea are used for bonsai is because satsuki bonsai started out as a flower hobby. And satsuki azaleas have interesting individual flowers, Their shape is neater because of the roundness of the petals and more open nature of the flower. And there is a lot of colour variation, so that each flower is unique. This is an up close effect that is different from having a landscaping scrub covered in white/pink/red/purple.
Also, the prices confuses me. 50 dollar for a garden plant is a lot of money. So it should be a very large container size. But their #1 seems to be a normal size. Those should really be 15 to 25 dollar.
So if you have some Hino Crimson yamadori and the trunk asks to be turned into a bonsai. Or it is free and going on the compost otherwise and you want to get some azalea experience. By all means go for it. No reason why not to bonsai. Small leaves and flowers, do well in contains, and they get really old. So no reason not to.
But I wouldn't even buy a Hino Crimson as a landscaping plant. It is a Dutch cultivar from 1944. Azalea expert Hachmann rates it 3 stars. That's actually pretty good for an old cultivar. And one more star than the original Hinodegiri. But plants like 'Maruschka', 'Johanna', 'Fridoline' are similar but better. Some of those are available in the US.
And there you have azaleas like 'Red Red', 'Midnight Flare' or 'Coronado Red'. Not completely identical plants in habit, but likely superior to Hino Crimson.
And that's for landscaping.
For bonsai, to me the flowers are key. You aren't going to get a huge strong tree very quickly. So you want a flower display tree. And for that, you need some flashy flowers.
I also do recommend satsuki for those in zone 7 or higher, because they backbud more easily and this makes them easier to train. No need to chop and prune very aggressive to get new branches on your trunk. And it is my personal opinion that R.indicum(satsuki) foliage looks way better than any other azalea species.
Furthermore, you can get many many native American hybrids. Bonsai people love to mention that one should work with native species. Well, you can work with native hybrids. That's close enough.
Deep Sea Driver recently found this place:
They have a very rich specialized assortment of azaleas, including many Japanese and native satsuki types. And they say they sell small plants/liners though mail order (interstate?).
If I understand their mail order details, you can get a batch of 18 small plants, extremely flashy and interesting cultivar, that are easy to train because of their satsuki/R.indicum nature, for less money than that you can buy that Hino Crimson that you have no idea how it looks. They wouldn't be bonsai whips, but they are 1 cutting in a pot(I assume, as they are liners) and young enough to direct towards a single trunk, I would imagine. Or the Brussel's no-name satsuki (probably Osakazuki) where even the stock picture has a bad trunk.
There are other places like White's Nursery, Nuccio's, van Veen, Talbott Nursery, Southern Living, any probably many others.
And if you don't care about flowers at all, because you like your traditional bonsai designs. That's fair. But then for sure you need to go to a nursery and observe individual plants.
www.naturehills.com
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