Vim is a text editor, whereas Emacs really is by definition just an Elisp runtime. Every time you type, you're calling the Elisp functions that are bound to those keys - this makes customisation simple - don't like it, you're free to change it to call different Elisp funcions.

And once you get the hang of it, it's so simple to make bindings to do ANYTHING you want (i.e your key bindings just do whatever you want them to do!).

So, out of the box, Emacs is a nice editor and some people have made default bindings... then you customise Emacs to be YOUR Emacs. In other words, Emacs is just a library for text editing and other utilities and you put them all together to make your own editor. Thinking this way, Emacs really isn't an editor at all, it's really a framework to create your own editor!