Well you’d have to consider what the sword is doing and its properties, the materials and what it is accomplishing. If it’s flesh and the sword is not that sharp it will struggle a little to pierce or at least not likely go all the way through, if it does, emphasis or blood spraying and a struggle to pull the sword back out would help you.

Any sort of animating required you to sort of feel it, to understand what it is that it is doing based on how it really functions rather than how you want it to function.

Late response, apologies