The VG Resource

i made these at work with 0 references ( a dumb and bad thing for me to do ) and i was thinking of dragging my dead ass back to pico-8 here and maybe trying to do something with them, but they need a little c+c especially on animations as far as where i'm going, standard limited palette from the Super Gameboy 
i'm not a very good pixelartist but

this is my last art outing attempt in my life i think while i'm here, and i want to make it count this time and see if i can finally do it 

I like the swing out, but the swing back in lacks windup. What I mean by that is the first slash makes sense because it's one of those edgy samurai quickdraws, but the follow-up swing feels like it should sort of wind backwards before slashing again.

Love the blue and orange, by the way. Is it gonna stay that way, or is that just for sketch work?

The style there is really interesting! But as Tom said, you should add more build up to the 2nd swing.

I also think that you should add a little more movement to his whole body to give the swings more force. Maybe a quick shake at the end of each swing, at least.

even though your sprites are of a more limited palette, the animations should stay true to the mechanisms of i.e. swinging a blade.

Hey, nice to see you sprite again! I like the character's design
Here's an edit:

I had issues with the anatomy, so I stretched him out to give him more grace (gave him a neck too), then I bent his limbs to make him seem less stiff. Tried to make him seem ready to unsheath by raising his arm and lowering the other, moved the feet into the centre of balance, tweaked the hat...
The difficulty with using a uniform colour for the body is giving it a readable silhouette.
Hope to see more!