"Swords were drawn like this a few times in the manga already," --> absolutely not, there is not much to say about this.
Kakuju's sword/whip was that way because its color was red, so in a black and white manga was obviously colored black.
Ryo balde was depicted as white by the anime, and for obvious reasons black cannot go for white.
Every other "white" sword in the manga was, is and will be colored, surprise surprise, using shades of white because they are...white.
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Again: one thing is being able to throw a punch, another is if punching is your core stile.
And that does not change, for the third time, that we did not see Aokiji punching until chapter 1080.