I don't want to be considered too childish, but in probably the most popular Japanese cartoon - Dragon Ball, a few years ago motif appeared where five pure souls of warriors combine their power in the sixth making him the God of these warriors. This cartoon is inspired by "Journey to the West", which in turn is inspired by Ramayana. Here is the scene:THE VIDEO CLIP HE SENT IS UNFORTUNATELY NO LONGER AVAILABLE
However, I thought his comment was interesting enough to post my reply to it.
Meher Baba's concept of the Avatar is found closest in Jesus. The Incarnation. God becomes flesh, takes birth as man. The descent of God. Jesus is both 100% man and 100% God (father and son as one).
The concept of Avatar as Baba teaches it is not found in Buddhism or Hinduism, so would not likely influence anime. But thank you for the fun video.
UPDATE 7/18/2025:
I recently was cleaning up this now defunct blog and came upon this short post. I thought it was a good place to put some recent discoveries I've made about what Baba said about the avatar.
This discovery happened due to my thinking about the opening sentence in the Wikipedia article on Meher Baba. I was one of the article's primary writers between 2006 and 2012. I almost never any more visit or work on it. However, when we were wording the lead paragraph years ago, several people objected to saying Baba said he was God in human form in the opening as it could be misunderstood. I defended the wording in the opening at the time, but have had a change of heart. It is in fact misleading as it had been worded most of these years. It said:
Meher Baba (born Merwan Sheriar Irani; 25 February 1894 – 31 January 1969) was an Indian spiritual master who said he was the Avatar, or God in human form, of the age.
The emphasis is mine. On thinking about this for a long time, it occurred to me that while it is true, it is misleading. Let me explain what I mean and then say how I have ammended it.
Meher Baba continually said he was God in human form. He emphasised that this was his continual experience and that it marks the state of consciousness of a God-realized person. However, he did not say the avatar is God in human form. The reason is that while the Avatar is indeed God in human form, all people are God in human form. And in fact bugs are God in bug form and plants are God in plant form. So just saying "God in human form" does not define the Avatar.
On looking into Baba's writing on this topic I was suprised what I learned. What it actually says in the chapter "Avatar" in Baba's Discourses is that the avatar is the total manifestation of God in human form. This is not just the wording within the article on the topic, but is repeated in the glossary in defining the word "Avatar."
So a more complete definition from his Discourses of what the Avatar is I would now say: "This new influx of the creative impulse manifests, through the medium of a divine personality, an incarnation of God in a special sense-the Avatar... Being the total manifestation of God in human form, He is like a gauge against which man can measure what he is and what he may become. He trues the standard of human values by interpreting them in terms of divinely human life." – Discourses, 7th edition, 1987. pp. 268-9
This avoids the contradition with Baba's own teaching that God is all that exists and we are all God.
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