@Comicgyal No it's not, give me an exact quote where Mori has in anyway shape or form labeled any of the alternate possibilities as a "what-if", because he's never done this before with the adaptations nor the side stories or alternate paths. No it is 100% relevant here, it's called a standard, where you apply the same rules and logic across other verses, if Dissidia needs canonical statements to be used in the mainline pages the same applies for Cross Tag.
What do you mean them fighting in a phantom field is new?
You do realize the dimension Nine was in for the Act 1 of Central Fiction that everyone fought her in was a Phantom Field right? So this doesn't even count as something new when that's something Phantom Fields have always done. Yes it does make it non canonical because there would be no reason for Naoto after the memory wipes, which he wasn't affected at all btw, would let him forget Ragna of all people, who helped him defeat a 3% Susanoo from destroying everything. If you want TAG to be canon, have it be referenced in mainline stuff.
@Strife304 if you read the end of Phase Shift 0 there's literally an authors note from Mori where he verbatim says the novels are canon and part of the Blazblue world, and how he wanted to expand on the story of the series with the novels. Nothing about them being "what-ifs" at all, which is a first for this series given again, nothing else prior was ever labeled as a what if.
Well you should because it's called standards/criteria to use crossover content. Dissidia had to go through massive amounts of evidence to prove that it's canon to be used on the main pages. Also yeah, they used the same powers and all that jazz, so does almost every other crossover ever that has numerous characters come together, that doesn't automatically make it canon to the main story of their respective series at all.
You say that like Dark War isn't a thing where they can have a route where anyone that was in Cross Tag could reference the events of that game. It's not impossible to have someone just reference a crossover like it's a thing that happened in their stories, hell
God of War Ragnarok literally has Kratos confirm that was in Playstation All Stars Battle Royale in his own game, so saying it's impossible for mainline Blazblue to reference Tag isn't true. Mori's statement which only says is part of the series, and a "what-if". If you can prove that Mori references other side materials as what-ifs and are indeed canon then I'll drop this point.
Random one shot as in a random event that's an isolated thing not connected to the mainline series in terms of story or continuity. What part of Rachel referencing them as a possibility proves Cross Tag is canon? You're not really elaborating here on how it proves its canonicity whatsoever.
You do realize characters like Celica and Noel and even Naoto to an extent due to them being Chronophantasmas wouldn't really apply here as they're stated to be singularities in their existence right? The whole infinite possibilities part doesn't even apply to them at all, as for downgrading the series, I mean you can try to downgrade the series, but you'd also have to claim Relius, Rachel and Kokonoe, essentially some of the most intelligent and reliable source of information in the entire series are completely wrong about the cosmology. So this whole "the series needs to be downgraded" would require massive leaps in logic.