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 outlawry is decisively ended by the combination of an international task force and the rebellion of his French captives. Though also widely published and translated, it never attained the lasting popularity of "Twenty Thousand Leagues". More similar to the original Nemo, though with a less finely worked-out character, is Robur in "Robur the Conqueror"—a dark and flamboyant outlaw rebel using an aircraft instead of a submarine—and its sequel "Master of the World". The novel was first translated into English in 1873 by Reverend Lewis Page Mercier. Mercier cut nearly a quarter of Verne's original text and made hundreds of translation