"Compiler" (1994) is a made-for-video anime production that comes in two disparate episodes. The first is more of a romantic drama than anything else and gives no hint of its science fiction trappings. The second episode is pretty much all sci-fi and filled with battles with aliens and giant monsters in Osaka. If there's any connecting tissue between the two episodes, I couldn't find it. There are four protagonists: two attractive young women identified as Compiler and Assembler and the two brothers they live with, Nachi, who works in an office, and Toshi, a college student. In the first episode, "Yin," it's established that the two women have feelings for the men (Compiler for Nachi, Assembler for Toshi) that seem to go unconsummated despite the fact that they all live together and Compiler parades around semi-nude much of the time. She rapidly gets disgusted with Nachi's womanizing ways, especially after a naïve young woman he'd seduced the night before (after Compiler had turned down his advances in a bar) shows up at their house following up on Nachi's drunken offer to have her move in.
The second episode, "Yang," finds the foursome pretty much ensconced in their relationships, although when they stay in hotel rooms in Osaka, each couple gets its own room but occupy separate beds, something I didn't quite understand. Early in the episode we get the sense that Compiler and Assembler may not be completely human when they insert computer disks into slots in their heads. They're eventually confronted by a pair of alien women named Upload and Download who have arrived in Osaka completely naked and who also sport disk drives in their heads. (When they realize they're in Osaka, they insert the Osaka disks so they can start talking in Osaka dialect and do Osaka-style comedy routines. I'm guessing that a lot gets lost in translation.) Upload and Download are there to "delete Compiler" and eventually, the two opposing pairs of alien women square off amidst Osaka landmarks to wage war using symbols of Osaka transformed into giant monsters. The good guys even call in a nuclear missile at one point which erupts in a mushroom cloud but appears to do very little damage.
After watching the tape containing these two episodes, I found a synopsis on the web that describes a rather complicated backstory involving an alternate 2-D world that sends Compiler and Assembler to destroy our world, but they end up getting co-opted by the two brothers, hence requiring another assassination team, Upload and Download, to finish the job. I didn't get any of this in the first episode and only a hint of it in the second. There's a third episode, entitled "Compiler 2," which has its own entry on IMDb, but I've never seen it and can find little information about it. The whole thing is based on a manga by Kia Asamiya, author of "Silent Mobius" and "Steam Detectives," and I imagine reading the manga would clear a lot of this up if, by some miracle, it ever gets published in English.
The second episode, "Yang," finds the foursome pretty much ensconced in their relationships, although when they stay in hotel rooms in Osaka, each couple gets its own room but occupy separate beds, something I didn't quite understand. Early in the episode we get the sense that Compiler and Assembler may not be completely human when they insert computer disks into slots in their heads. They're eventually confronted by a pair of alien women named Upload and Download who have arrived in Osaka completely naked and who also sport disk drives in their heads. (When they realize they're in Osaka, they insert the Osaka disks so they can start talking in Osaka dialect and do Osaka-style comedy routines. I'm guessing that a lot gets lost in translation.) Upload and Download are there to "delete Compiler" and eventually, the two opposing pairs of alien women square off amidst Osaka landmarks to wage war using symbols of Osaka transformed into giant monsters. The good guys even call in a nuclear missile at one point which erupts in a mushroom cloud but appears to do very little damage.
After watching the tape containing these two episodes, I found a synopsis on the web that describes a rather complicated backstory involving an alternate 2-D world that sends Compiler and Assembler to destroy our world, but they end up getting co-opted by the two brothers, hence requiring another assassination team, Upload and Download, to finish the job. I didn't get any of this in the first episode and only a hint of it in the second. There's a third episode, entitled "Compiler 2," which has its own entry on IMDb, but I've never seen it and can find little information about it. The whole thing is based on a manga by Kia Asamiya, author of "Silent Mobius" and "Steam Detectives," and I imagine reading the manga would clear a lot of this up if, by some miracle, it ever gets published in English.
