Wanted posters and Fire Nation propaganda: Jaku's Avatar translation wakes up
Barely noticed on its first day, the video about the Chinese characters hidden in Avatar: The Last Airbender is now running close to eighty times its usual pace.
JakuStory of Why this story? The video is running at 47,006 views a day, 78 times its usual pace (604).
What Does All the Chinese Writing in Avatar Actually Say?
What did the Fire Nation actually write on those wanted posters? Jaku went looking. He translated the Chinese characters scattered through Avatar: The Last Airbender, on posters, maps, shop signs and even in the opening. By his account, he found Fire Nation propaganda, hidden jokes and small pieces of character backstory along the way.
The video went up on September 26 and drew only a few hundred views on its first day. Five days later it is pulling in around 47,000 a day and has passed 50,000 in total. The channel as a whole is not having an unusually big stretch. This is one video finding its moment, late.
It belongs to a run Jaku has been posting almost daily, each episode built on the same question: what is that character really saying? He has covered Luz's Spanish in The Owl House, Bill Cipher's backwards lines in Gravity Falls, a scene with the Ice King, a Scottish character in Brave and the Russian in Pickle Rick. The Bill Cipher episode, posted three days after Avatar, already has more views.
The comments under the Avatar video read like fans adding footnotes. The most liked one supplies a wanted poster the video skipped, for Jeong Jeong, the firebender who deserted the Fire Nation navy. Another notes that Zuko's name is written with three different sets of characters across the show and the comics, each carrying its own meaning. Some viewers ask what the other wanted posters and the untranslated red lettering say. One points out that the writing is in classical Chinese, a style hardly anyone writes in today. Another says they had wondered about those posters since watching as a kid, roughly twenty years ago, and finally have an answer.
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What viewers say
Another neat detail is that Zuko's name was written in three different ways, 祖寇 (寇 as in 'bandit') in Book 1, and 蘇科 (蘇 as in 'awaken') in the Tales of Ba Sing Se episode, and 豎高 (as in 'to stand tall') in the comics.
@ian1231100See it on YouTubeThank you so much. I've wondered as a kid what those posters said exactly. Now, after 20 years, I know. Genuinely, thanks, man.
@Joe-i6e6cSee it on YouTubeThey really did their homework. It takes a lot of commitment, and ATLA is the reason why I got into learning Asian culture
@bluedude7445See it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- Jaku
- Subscribers
- 187,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 876,758 (on a normal day: 1,291,562)
- Video published
- September 26, 2026
- Video views so far
- 50,225 (5 days online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 47,006 (on a normal day: 5,244)
The numbers
The figures show a five-day-old video that started slowly and is now moving far faster than it ever has.
💡 Test your knowledge
On which network did Avatar: The Last Airbender first air?
Avatar: The Last Airbender premiered on Nickelodeon in 2005, and the video's own tags name the network.
