MD often involves a fair bit of animation.
If you look at the individual components, though [1], most of them (like cards) actually have no associated JS at all.
Most of the other components, like the TextField (which includes JS to have things like the placeholder text swoop to a mini version above the field once you start typing) have gracefully-degrading versions. Not all of them do, however.
1. https://github.com/material-components/material-components-w...
Why on earth do we need JS involved in what should be some simple HTML / CSS?