[PortalTron]

I think Ghost benefits greatly nowadays due to people being able to watch it as a more stand-alone series.

I think it's important to consider when and how Ghost first aired.

Ghost had the misfortune of airing right after two well received series, with both series being pretty up-front about the plot from the start.

Gaim: Advertising for the show stated that Gaim would be the "strongest Rider" (up for debate) with an emphasis on the multiple-Rider/Rider War element. There were mixed feelings at first amongst most fans given that it starts off a bit light-hearted, but later on it brings a lot of twists that raise the stakes for the show.

Drive: Had a bit of a difficult time starting out given the sheer success and popularity of Gaim. The show was also advertised as just Shinnosuke hunting down Roidmudes as part of a Police unit. Drive's writing was clever in a retroactive way as it didn't try to copy Gaim's means of success, but managed to still be engaging and provide twists late into the show in it's own style.

Ghost: Ghost had a troubled start to say the least. The advertising for the show seemed to put emphasis on the "spooky" and historical aspects, with Ghost acting rather spookily in the last two Drive episodes as a really interesting introduction to the Ghost series.

Flash forward to Ghost's airing, and it the tone ended up being wildly different compared to what most envisioned by that point. Most waited it out to see if it would pull a Gaim/Drive situation and improve later in the shows runtime, but it never pulled off the same kinds of appealing twists that Gaim and Drive managed to do.

Personally, Ghost is among my personal favorite Rider Designs and Gimmicks and the idea of combining historical figures with a ghost gimmick is still one of the single coolest ideas I've seen in Toku. That being said, the story isn't too bad, but again, it ended up being pretty different compared to what was previously advertised and unlike Gaim and Drive, who's initial plots are relevant for the majority of the show, but Ghost's plot drops out of relevancy pretty early on.

I recall a lot of rumors/words going around that there was a negative reaction among parents for Ghost's cameo in the Drive movie, but I have never seen evidence to support that claim. I do something changed behind the scenes, as the original plot for Ghost at the press conference mentioned that he would be traveling around the world in search of the Eyecons and learn what it meant to be hero from figures in history. Given that there is no "global search" and that he is already pretty heroic and never gets directly told "how to be a hero" it's pretty safe to say that somewhere along the lines changes were made. Also, as a minor spoiler, there are elements in the two-parter Drive episodes that never show up in Ghost's show, such as Ghost acting a bit off compared to his show (listening to Shinnosuke on the phone, fighting while invisible, arguing with Yurusen), the Gamma working with humans, and Eyecons having some sort of mystical power on their own (Newton's eyecon is shown as having some sort of wishing/reality warping ability). Again, these episodes aired right before Ghost's own show aired, which seems to indicate some sort of change in the approach for how the elements in Ghost's show would function

Does this mean that Ghost as a show is objectively awful? No, it's up for debate. But to understand why there was such an initial negative reaction it's important to ascertain the context at the time.