Yeah. I used to like procedure-porn, but there needs to be something more than that to keep me invested long term. I almost wished that Madhouse skipped through the karuta tournament and jumped to some of the later volume stuff in the manga, since there are at least new twists on playing the game rather than "it's so hard to lose but I need to keep trying".
It's not really just sports shows that suffer from these problems. Procedure-porn stories might do a great job of portraying the character fulfilling their specific duties (e.g. policemen, boxer, soldier) but because we never see anything of them outside these settings they aren't as well rounded as they could be and consequently you feel less attachment to them.
I wrote earlier
Ano Natsu works really well as fast=paced, silly romance story about one particular set of characters but that once you separate the characters from their context (e.g. the specific "will they or wont they?" relationships) upon which the show is based then there's really nothing interesting going on with them.
Compare and contrast that to works like
Paradise Kiss or
Honey and Clover where I'm interested in the characters
beyond the key relationships in the show. In a completely different genre and tone,
Patlabor TV does such a good job of mixing up it's story-structures that you get a good feel for the whole cast, even though it's largely an episodic show with zero character growth.
