Review by S. Horwatt

I’ll echo what a lot of the other reviewers have said, in that Anime Studio Debut is fairly straightforward to use, but requires a fair amount of fiddling around to learn very effectively. If you really have no clue about the basic principles of animation, then you will have to learn that as you learn the package, which will make the learning curve seem very steep (but I think this would be true of any animation package). If you want to do very straightforward things, like make simple cutout animations or animate portions of photos, it shouldn’t be too difficult to learn.

Having played with Anime Studio Pro (which is ~$200), Debut is actually very similar, but with some of the more advanced features unavailable. The good news about this is that if you get really into animation with Debut, you can invest the larger sum and move up to a more powerful package that works in the same basic way, so you’re not starting from scratch. If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to stick your toe in the water of making your own computer animations, Anime Studio Debut fits the bill pretty well.