Would it be a bad idea to electroplate a knife?
Pictured below is the Ginsu Shoku Series Anodized Cutlery.



But this sort of thing is largely gimmicky, the kind of thing you see on knives at roving Gun &amp; Knife Shows.

If there were legitimate and truly competitive reasons, not cosmetic ones, to employ anodization we can pretty well bet this is something all major cutlery concerns would have already adopted as among viable options.

There is however a new technology known as Low Temperature Plasma Nitriding which appears to have promise. It's covered here and with good pictures here.