I LOVE
Tweety
Released only in Japan, the absolute first DVD releases of the Looney Tunes shorts represent the earliest true attempts at restoration.
Background
By 1996, DVD-Video was finally made available in Japan, other countries slowly following suit shortly after. The United States, however, was slowly adapting to this format, so much so that VHSes continued to be released on the series as late as the early 2000s.
Meanwhile, DVDs remained popular early on in their lifespan in Japan, and being the first widespread digital format to release video media, Warner Bros. saw this as a new opportunity for their library. The studio has experimented with early DVDs on their (usually) live-action movies, but on the animation side, minimal work was previously done with restoration. The 1998 dubbed versions, which marked the absolute earliest restorations, were primarily previously only available on the analog VHS and LaserDisc sets, with almost no advantage to show its full glory outside the slowly developing digital television. Now able to finally escape the degradation of analog prints, Warner Bros. increased their incentive to start the restoration project.
Japanese fans would get the first lick of official restorations with the I Love Tweety series in 2001, about five years after the release of DVD and close to the end of the VHS lifespan. Tweety remained an absolute favorite in Japan, occasionally even eclipsing the series' main star, Bugs Bunny. So while using primarily Tweety as the main course for starting the release of shorts on DVD media seemed a bit of an oddball choice for international collectors, the Japanese were already thrilled. By the time the series was released, the Japanese division had already mapped out three volumes to all be released in 2001.
Each volume included 10 different Tweety shorts, all newly restored for the first time. Also included was a bonus Bugs Bunny short that was also restored, but only via being a 1998 dubbed version. Being primarily for the Japanese audience, most of the DVD menus were indeed in Japanese. However, in addition to the Japanese dubs, the original English audio tracks are also included.
In spite of that, the discs were encoded for Region 2, targeting Japan and European DVD players. However, in contemporary days, methods to often play discs from any region have often rendered this slowly moot, which made the collection rather popular after it gained American attention.
For the restorations themselves, they were (understandably early on) littered with DVNR and were made with standard-definition video in mind, meaning they were only formatted for 480p resolution at best and eventually didn't scale well when HD formats slowly came to rise in the 2010s. You can learn more about the restoration process at the History page. For the first three volumes of the later released Golden Collection, most of the Tweety shorts included had their prints originate from here, and thus they're identical to each other. However, later on, newly restored prints were made after purists complained about the DVNR present, and thus, as early as the fifth volume of the aforementioned set, shorts were being re-restored for the first time from a previous restoration, where "Red Riding Hoodwinked" received an entirely new print with significantly better color and much less DVNR.
While all of the shorts in these sets have since been re-restored again to the HD resolution in recent years (most of it being done in 2020 for HBO Max and being fully completed by volume 4 of Collector's Choice), this set still remains significantly notable for its restoration efforts and is often looked upon as a buffer between the older unrestored prints and any newer restorations made for HD. In addition, some shorts were never made available in America on home media, and for unknown reasons, the American division never received these prints outside the Golden Collection, hence why some later DVD sets released in America featuring shorts included in these sets (such as the DVD reissue of Stars of Space Jam) are unrestored instead of the same prints from this set. They currently still remain in print in Japan as of this day but may be pricey depending on how much imports cost in your country.
