Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy character designer Tetsuya Nomura recently judged a fanart contest at deviantART, which featured the Final Fantasy XIII series' recurring protagonist and costume aficionado, Lightning. After looking through literally thousands of submissions, he picked three. Here they are.

You may think that cosplaying as Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII is just about getting the hair, outfit and skinny-and-tall body frame right, but in order to nail that look down completely you'll need to do some face work as well. Enter Emma Pickles, who has made this helpful makeup video tutorial for just that…

Square Enix believes that Lightning, the main character of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, has a lot of fans.

I might not have recommended Lightning Returns, but I'm not going to let those grabbing the game anyway enter the fray unarmed. Though it goes against the hardcore role-playing game fan's pride, I'd highly recommend playing the game on Easy Mode first.

Tomb Raider DLC for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII? Sure.

The world of Japanese video game development can often feel mysterious to those of us in the Western Hemisphere, so it's always cool to get these behind-the-scenes peeks at studios like Square Enix.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, the third and final(?) chapter of the Final Fantasy XIII saga, came out in Japan last November, and what do you know, it's pretty good. At least Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai thinks so.

One of the highlights of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is all the costumes you can play around with. Aside from the costumes included in the game and the DLC costumes, Square Enix also has a limited Aerith from Final Fantasy VII costume and weapons. Well, it was supposed to be limited.

Sure Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII has great gameplay and fun musical quirks, but let's be serious: We don't care about that. We're all here just because we want to dress up Lightning in awesome costumes.

When people ask me what Lightning Returns is like, I always respond that it's a lot like Final Fantasy X-2. A lot of people seem to take this as an insult to Lightning Returns. It's not. While I feel like I am in the minority, I loved FFX-2 and much of what made it so fun to play is also present in Lightning Returns.

This past week, as I’ve been working my way through Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, I’ve noticed the game has—whether it’s minstrels, treasure boxes, or even the crowd at the coliseum—loads of aural Easter eggs just waiting to be uncovered.

One of them is bad. But that's okay, I guess? Behold some of the latest Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII downloadable content.

The Japanese voice track and lip sync animations will be available as DLC for the English version of Lightning Returns. The pack, per the latest announcement from Squeenix, will be free to download for two weeks after release, after which time it becomes paid DLC. Above is the newly-released "special effects" trailer.

The fine folks over at Japanese news site 4Gamer.net managed to get their hands on the shortly-releasing Japanese version of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. So, of course, they immediately went and captured some footage for the rest of us.

Good thing mizz Lightning has the time to stay fashionable in between going on missions to save the world. Otherwise, we couldn't spend all this time looking at her fabulous outfits.

Got your skepticism goggles on? Okay. After months of gameplay footage and details, I'm ready to call it: Lightning Returns looks like the best single-player Final Fantasy we've seen in years.

What's that you say? You can't wait for February, when Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII comes out, and you need to watch footage in Japanese just to get your fix? No worries. We've got you covered.