I agree with you about both magic and reactivity (meaning, IIUC, asynchronous rather than blocking APIs). Helidon Nima looks interesting.

But what I'd really like in Java is a non-magic, non-reactive server-side web framework that's designed to be used for full-stack, server-side web applications, including things like strongly-typed HTML templates, form validation and rendering, cookie-based authentication, and CSRF protection. Something we can use to develop a complete server-side web application, the kind that everyone used to write before the division into back-end API and front-end SPA became popular. Helidon Nima might be a good starting point for such a framework. Another starting point worth looking at is Javalin [1].

[1]: https://javalin.io/