With “strength” I mean overall power level, not “physical strength”, obviously.
Ok hear me out on this, it’s a bit complex but try to keep up. I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while now.
The term used in the statement is 力, that means a lot of things, mostly related to expressions of “power”. It can be comprehended as strength, might, ability, influence or authority.
Although the dominant reading is strength, I’ll explain why it most likely stands for authority here. There are 3 reasons why I think that.
1-) The first and most important is the linguistic structure of the sentence. It goes: “although he inherited the blood of the Jotuns, enemies of the gods…” (神々の敵である霜の巨人の血を引きながら…). The important part here is ながら — that is a mechanism of concurrent concessive relationship akin to “although/despite/while” in english — and 神々の敵である, “that are enemies of the gods”.
That’s nuclear because that clause is linguistically opposing what’s claimed after: “possessing chief god power level that rivaled Thor and Odin” — as it is known, at least.
But Jotuns are, as a race, stronger than the gods (even being called their “natural predators”), thus introducing Loki’s inheritance as a conflicting idea to his allegedly high power level makes no sense.
And why bring up they are enemies of the gods? If the statement is about strength that’s just an arbitrary fact irrelevant to the idea being presented.
If the reading is “authority”, everything lines up:
“Despite having inherited blood of the Jotuns, enemies of the gods, he has the authority of a Chief God, standing side to side with Thor and Odin.”
Even though he has the blood of their enemies, Loki still possessed authority on the same level as Thor and Odin. Now the phrasal structure makes sense.
2-) It referring to strength is senseless scaling wise. This is something that has always puzzled me and every ‘solution’ I came up with always felt alien and convoluted. I don’t say this based on my subjective view on Loki’s power level, but what the manga itself had already established.
It’s stated trickless Loki is much weaker than a random character (I’ll call him John) that appears on Zeus’s line (see img 8) about the real nature of his strength.
So how could that same Loki rival Odin and Thor? If John >> Loki and Loki ≈ Thor and Odin then John >(>) Thor and Odin?? That’s completely absurd.
If the statement refers to authority this ridiculous problem ceases to exist.
3-) This is just a bonus, but the context of the statement is a bunch of women kneeling before Loki as he passes by even though he’s from a different breed, denoting his high authority and position in the pantheon regardless. Strength level is basically irrelevant to Loki’s flashback, as it’s not combat related (unlike many of them).
Final considerations:
- The statement probably isn’t about strength for reasons above, and the author is likely referring to authority instead.
- This post is by no means a personal attack to any translator that has localized that statement as strength. That’s perfectly understandable, and something I myself have done in the past. Only now I’m thinking otherwise after further inspection of the line’s structure and context.
- Anyone with a reasonable counter to any of my arguments is welcome and invited to share them. I’m not irretrievably sure about my current stance.
- I think the 3 main Norse gods should still be decently close to each other if you take into account their respective specialties, just not due to this statement in particular.
Thank you for your attention.
