How do you tell what skill is activated?

[Israel011]

When a skill is activated is there a animation?
All I know is when shooting star is activated green sparkles come out.

[Lord Fuckboy]

It should be common sense if you've actually seen the animations in battle before.

[Israel011]

I have not played the game in 6 months, so thats an explanation.
I am asking this because i'm going to start to play it tommorow.

[ShinQuickMan]

 The only skills that have any unique visual animations are starshoot sword, sun sword, moon sword, and big shield.

 Starshoot sword surrounds the user in green sparkles; sun sword surrounds them in orange sparkles; and moonsword surrounds them in blue sparkles. When big shield activates, it's user will have a rectangular, clear blue object in front of them when they get attacked.

 Every other skills have no other noticeable visual effects, so you'll need to recognize them by memory...

EDIT:
To help out a little more:

- Pursuit: The user attacks twice during the attack phase. Simple, right?

- Continue: The user attacks twice in a row. Pretty tricky sometimes to determine whether the attack came from pursuit or continue, but always remember that only continue's extra attack is guaranteed to be consecutive.

- Critical: The user performs a critical hit. Next.

- Prayer: The user is dodging a number of attacks, even if the attacks are almost guaranteed to hit.

- Ambush: The character goes first when the opponent initiated the attack turn.

- Duel: The user and the opponent attack more often than normal. Might be hard to determine with other skills if the opponent has no method of counterattacking.

- Wrath: All of the user's attacks are criticals.

[Israel011]

Thanks.This will help me to remember the different skills and effects.

[SolarAdept]

Besides, does it really matter if you can tell if a skill is activated, or no, what matters is that they DO activate.

Also:
Sun hit and lunar hit are the same as shooting star except the sparkles have different color.

[Celice]

Graphically, they're the same, at least.  Just different palettes of the same graphics.

Also, remember that some of those skills have certain requirements.  I'm pretty sure Wrath will not activate at all times no matter the circumstance (infinite critical?)--so if you don't remember the activations, and you want to know beforehand, I suggest you look them up.  Not like you wouldn't learn most of them as you play, though