2. Not at all - animation is something I need in my day job all the time, and having .animate() saves me so much time. I wasn't sure if I'd get much use out of transitions (I was jealous of ng-animate and wanted to see if I could implement something similar!) but I've found them very useful. Transitions probably need a bit more work though.

3. It just doesn't need any. The amount of code I could save by using a helper library like Underscore wouldn't be worth the potential extra hassle of version headaches etc. Personally I much prefer using 'fire and forget' libraries with no dependencies.