I'd urge you to think about why JS keeps getting more "complex" (your phrase). There is a reason, but no one can tell it to you; you have to discover it for yourself, or it'll always feel like you're blindly following others.
It's very hard to approach a thing you don't know and accurately point out the flaws. What I suggest doing is first get to know some of these "complex" JS frameworks/libraries, and then figure out what it is you don't like. Otherwise you're going to end up not really understanding what you're talking about, and you'll miss out on some cool tech just because the popular kids online didn't like it.
Hi,
I personally completely agree with you that we should use simplest javascript to achieve a project requirement. I guess the decision is really depend on:
Do you have to build single page application?
If yes, then its easier to build via a framework like Angular, react or vue.
If no, then you will have freedom to choose whatever library you want to use in order to satisfy requirement.
In addition, recently I started to look into web components. It is now part w3c standard and supported by most modern browsers. It allows us to construct components via raw javascript.