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Originally Posted by Keroko
Personally, I'd say its a bit less plot-devicey to have them investigate earth after Chao did her thing, and they were send to investigate the huge spike of magicaal energy.
Though I think its a good idea not to cross more than one series. Using ellements of another series is fine, but when we start dragging settings and characters of more than two series in a crossover, things usually start to break down in my experience.
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If it's an attempt at blending which works off the idea that the universe are the same, but that the characters have never encountered each other this is often true. Still the rule isn't iron clad either, I've seen some fairly large crossovers that didn't use alternate universes or the like. While harder to do without opening up gapping plot holes if done well they can be quite interesting to read as the author weaves the different canons together.
As in any writing it's really the skill of the author that most contributes to success or failure though.
If you just toss the blending idea and go for alternate worlds though the number of crossovers possible is much higher. It’s also easier to explain. (And if you already have magic or sci-fi frankly not that outlandish as the Many Worlds theory isn’t rock solid, but it is a possibility.) In this case even if the former option is chosen I do think it could work with only minor reworking. We don't hear much about Espers in Negima, but we don't really see anything that says they're impossible either and focusing on a Magic user it would have little reason to show much of them either. Negima also seems to show that various sorts of magical socities or cabals exist and that magic is actively hidden which would again fit rather neatly with the Index-verse.
So really it's the TSAB that becomes the big problem with such a cross IMO. According to canon Earth does not have a large magic using community, but then again one could go with the old "As far as they know..." out. Indeed one could perhaps even weave a background that the reason magic is hidden is
because of the TSAB. Perhaps not wanting to be bothered with its rules and regulations the magic users of Earth are aware of the TSAB, but content to hide and let the TSAB think it’s an uninteresting world of magic blunts. Using this approach it would seem likely that Earth was "lost" sometime in the past probably during the massive wars that brought down the Belkan Empire which destroyed records of it. Another option is that a small core of mages may have actively destroyed records of it and used it as a "safe house" to ride out the war. (This also explains some of the differences in practice as the Earth mages have developed there own systems separate from the large state taught styles of the TSAB.)
The TSAB appears to have had a very minor presence on the world, only showing up at all when a very large scale disturbance was detected. They appear as of S1 to have no permanent bases or monitoring installation on the planet. It’s entirely possible that after a brief survey decades ago which showed an underdeveloped world with no active magic community the TSAB “monitoring” consisted of the occasional fly by of a ship ever few years. Such a weak knee approach would likely not uncover a magical underground that even the planets permanent residents are not aware of. After the Jewel Seed and Book of Darkness incident though they seem to have taken more of an interest in the world. This could finally result in them perhaps uncovering some oddities that lead to them digging deeper and uncovering the hidden magic users.
With a bit of work it's often possible to fit a number of universe together into one, but it's not always possible and sometimes some things do need to be trimmed to fit. Having said that I myself largely prefer the "Inter-universe travel" approach, it's frankly not that outlandish compared to what many universes already have, and while unlikely perhaps not actually impossible
even in real life. It also IMO allows for more flexibility in how they universe meet and interact since by tweaking the method used and the rules about it you can allow or disallow allot of stuff fairly plausibly. (It also frees you of a possibly heavy and limiting backstory to explain why they two series haven't met until now.)
I've acutally pondered this myself a bit as of late as I've been screwing around with a Halo/Macross/other stuff crossover.