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 Prince Dakkar), it is muddied by the presence of several irreconcilable chronological contradictions between the two books and even within "The Mysterious Island." Verne returned to the theme of an outlaw submarine captain in his much later "Facing the Flag". That book's main villain, Ker Karraje, is a completely unscrupulous pirate acting purely and simply for gain, completely devoid of all the saving graces which gave Nemo—for all that he, too, was capable of ruthless killings—some nobility of character. Like Nemo, Ker Karraje plays "host" to unwilling French guests—but unlike Nemo, who manages to elude all pursuers, Karraje's career of