Atlantis: The Lost Empire from Studio Ghibli, particularly in its character design, setting, and story. Although Disney never responded formally to claims of plagiarism, co-director Kirk Wise posted on a Disney animation newsgroup in May 2001, "Never heard of "Nadia" till it was mentioned in this [newsgroup]. Long after we'd finished production, I might add." Both "Atlantis" and "Nadia" were inspired, in part, by the 1870 Jules Verne novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", of which Lee Zion (reporting for Anime News Network) wrote, "There are too many similarities "not" connected with "20,000 Leagues" for the whole thing to be coincidence." Critics also
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea not to a "depth", as 20,000 leagues (80,000 km) is nearly twice the circumference of the Earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is four leagues. The book uses metric leagues, which are four kilometres each. During the year 1866, ships of several nations spot a mysterious sea monster, which some suggest to be a giant narwhal. The United States government assembles an expedition in New York City to find and destroy the monster. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a French marine biologist and narrator of the story, who happens to be in New York at the time, receives a last-minute