If you had actually tried the first few versions of Macromedia Flash, on hardware of the time, you'd be surprised what could be accomplished. SVG is absolutely bloated in comparison.
I did, I taught classes on Macromedia Flash in the late 90s and early 2000s. That version of Flash simply isn't relevant to the modern web. You might as well be comparing RealPlayer with modern YouTube.
That said, I'm not sure what you would want to remove from "bloated" SVG.
If you had actually tried the first few versions of Macromedia Flash, on hardware of the time, you'd be surprised what could be accomplished. SVG is absolutely bloated in comparison.