Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing - Episode 8

The climax to last week's Last Exile saw Sylvius enter rather a tight spot, with a massed armada of Ades forced quite happy to unleash Hell upon their craft unless they choose to hand over Millia into their control... or indeed, probably even if they do choose to do so.

Despite the protestations of Millia, Sylvius' captain knows the situation and is never likely to either turn tail and run outright or give up the girl in her care, so with no other options in sight it's full steam ahead into the midst of their immediate rivals - not that the Sylvius is exactly lacking in the means to defend itself, as it proves itself adept in terms of both manoeuvrability and firepower to give the Ades forces rather a shock.

Then again, their opposition has a few tricks of their own up their sleeve, and as Fam choose to leave in her Vanship, taking Millia with her, it looks as though the Slyvius is about to finally come a cropped under the sheer weight of numbers and the bombardment their facing.  However, an incredibly gutsy decision and its spectacular outcome sees them finally break through and enter Glacies' territory, setting the Federation forces up for another nasty surprise to deal with and (via another physics-defying stunt) saving the Slyvius into the bargain.

Fam, the Silver Wing has been crying out for an action-oriented episode for a little while now, and boy did we get it here with interest, providing a spectacular and grandiose mid-air battle which filled the entire instalment and was simply fantastic to watch.  My only real query about the episode is what exactly Fam was trying to do by leaving the Sylvius and flying around seemingly at random, which felt like it was introduced to further create a rift between Fam and Gise until Millia's spectacular downing of the Anshar.  But hey, who cares about stuff like physics and practicalities when you have awesome stuff to watch on-screen?