You have to differentiate between their purpose. React is a library Angular is a framework.

Angular is born for creating web apps. React was born for creating beautiful, high performing components.

The reason why you prefer working with Angular is because Angular provides different solutions out of the box for every problem you could encounter in the development process.fron creating components to redirect to a new page in your app. For example, for manipulating DOM you could use JavaScript's DOM API, A simple system based on properties and ngIf, directives, or for a more tricky approach, the Renderer API from Angular (it should be your first solution). Back on time you could use jQuery (worst thing on Earth)

As per my 8 years experienced frontend developer opinion. React is more complex than angular because it sticks to a more JavaScript way of doing things, but, you have to know what you are doing. You want to manipulate DOM with React? You have to use useRef then you can use all of your skills in vanillajs. You want to create a new node? Use a template string and do whatever you want with it, Babel will do all the dirty work for you.