what's with sword or battle oriented anime and sword licking?

Anyone who is crazy enough to lick his or her sword is someone I would not like to go up aganist in a fight. As it was mentioned before it is a way to intimaedate your foe. As far as that goes it would work on me!:smile:

I already knew the reason behind the sward licking, as said before, its for intimidation, provoke, as well as to show how big of a nut job the person is in the way of blood lust. It’s still very annoying to me personally. But I have a question that I always have wanted to ask... I wonder if any of them doing this has cut their tongue on their bloody sward and has contracted some form of blood poisoning.

As for seeing their eyes through their hair... Well I am a big time doodler and a damn good one at that, and generally if you’re drawing a person you start with head and eyes and then add in the details. But as for leaving the out lines in there... It would probably have to be about still being able to show the characters emotional stand point on a given situation to the audience. But if it were me my excuse would be "Because I was too lazy."

Some have mentioned good and really plausible points about the eye and hair thing. With this i'd like to mention mine...

Eyes are a big part of an anime character's very image, most of the time you can identify the personality of a character just by looking at the eyes. For most people, anime itself is identified just by the characters' eyes. Losing those eyes under a mass of hair can greatly affect characterization, it takes away one of the most essential elements in anime thus making the show unidentifiable and unattractive for some (maybe a lot) people. For me, it isn't really an "odd" thing to begin with considering that anime is a heavily stylized artform.

Eyes do get lost under a mass of hair in anime but it is mostly done just to add depth of emotion and drama, eyes are often lost when characters are irate, angry, shocked, sad, or just thinking deeply.

Ascot, a character from Magic Knight Rayearth has his eyes covered by his hair most of the time, it was a good move by the artist because it kinda reflected Ascot's mischievous personality.

Back in the day when the hair of the characters were more realistic it wasn't really a common thing. But as anime became more and more stylized over the years, this hair and eye thing became so common.

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Originally Posted by Scourge

I already knew the reason behind the sward licking, as said before, its for intimidation, provoke, as well as to show how big of a nut job the person is in the way of blood lust. It’s still very annoying to me personally. But I have a question that I always have wanted to ask... I wonder if any of them doing this has cut their tongue on their bloody sward and has contracted some form of blood poisoning."

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omg. finally someone who gets me. i've always wondered that too. i mean it's a sharp object rubbing against a soft tongue, that could easily get cut, but i guess the person wouldn't care if they were a nut job. and can u get blood poisoning? i mean they can obviously get a std, but i haven't heard of blood poisoning from injesting blood.