Traumend starts off from where the first series stopped; after the victorious battle with Suigintou, Shinku starts to feel the guilt of eliminating one of her sisters, all because of the Alice Game. In fact, Shinku simply made her into a "piece of junk". Is it wrong to feel sad for an enemy you've just defeated?
Anyway, after completing Traumend, it's an improvement(but not massively) on the series, if you compare it to the original. Focusing more into the story, providing adequate explanation and reducing the number of trivial episodes. The story can be quite unpredictable sometimes; just when I thought THAT "Father" was the REAL "Father", turns that he isn't. There's also a considerable amount of drama with some fighting sequences and comedy going on. Final episode was more intense and better than in the original. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed with the results of the Alice Game.
Why climb when you can fly? - the characters' actions can be amusing. So, these dolls have the ability to fly(depends on the location or perhaps their mood). When I noticed that few of the them were "climbing their way out of danger", only for the enemy to catch up with them because she simply flew. You can sit there, relax and be amused by some their actions.
Episodes 3, 5 and 7 are mostly just filler episodes, haphazardly placing keypoints of it's story that only lasts few minutes(sometimes mere seconds) and most of time, near the end. But hey, they're fairly watchable. It does focus on the story from time to time but at least 1/3 of the anime consist of very, slice-of-life-ish episodes. Like the original, pacing is slow as a snail.
Traumend also introduces new characters and most of them play a major role in the story. First thing's first, Traumend has a new antagonist, the seventh and youngest Rozen Maiden doll, Barasuishou. Nevertheless, even with the new bunch of people, Suigintou remains as my number one character in the entire series and will always be.
Comparing the original and Traumend and there's no enhancement on visuals. After all, Traumend retains the whole same old visuals; colors are dull; not bright but Rozen Maiden dolls still look beautiful as ever, just like in the first. The visuals are sometimes inconsistent - characters faces differ from scene to scene. Just the same old, same old.
ALI PROJECT performs the OP for this one too. Sadly, the majority of her songs including this is just not for me. Listened to the ED, and it was actually quite good. But it gets old pretty quickly. BGM ranges from rock music(sadly the epic rock music is very rarely played) to same orchestral music pieces back in the original.
To sum up, there's improvement in the overall storytelling, but even with that, I still wouldn't recommend it to everyone. After watching both seasons in the franchise, I must say that this is more recommended to the casual viewers. In any case, this is one series you have to see for yourself. You might enjoy it...or not.
