You have a completely wrong mindset.
You don't delete mods, you can disable them if needed (F1 in KK, I assume it's the same), but most of the time you simply ignore them/don't use them when you don't need them, it's not that big of a deal.
In general, you never have enough mods, the repack mods + the ones that KKManager installs? That's just the start.
All HS2/KK devs have way more than those offered by those two, and even then, it's never enough, as you'll eventually need to make your own as well... So no, you're going in the completely opposite direction. It's not that you have too many mods, you don't have enough.
The UI is fine... It's something you need to get used to. Once you do, it's good enough.
VAM is just Daz3D but in real time, not worth it imho.
Speaking of mods, to have better looking graphics, you use post processing and shaders:
You must be registered to see the links
High quality textures:
You must be registered to see the links
and much more that the youtuber you mentioned should also cover (
You must be registered to see the links
).
As for animations, the youtuber you mentioned has also a tutorial:
You must be registered to see the links
In short, you use the "Timeline mod" for it. That's for custom ones, but there are many mod added ones, especially from mixamo pack (SFW).
As for VAM vs HS2... It depends. Do you want to sell your game? If you make a game with HS2, you cannot sell it.
You can sell a game made with VAM, however, you need to purchase the license for each model you use since it's basically DAZ3D but wrapped in a real time environment, in that case it makes more sense to me to use Daz3D directly, if you had Nvidia. But people who use VAM might disagree with me, I've never personally used it, so perhaps I am wrong on this.