I consider Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day the perfect beginner anime for a couple of reasons:

• short - with only 11 episodes it’s not a huge time investment (compared to multi-cour shows or mammoths with hundreds or thousands of episodes)
• universal - the concepts of the show are universal to every gender and culture. You don’t need to know or learn any Japan-specific terminology to immediately understand the plot (ie. chuunibyou, shinigami, yokai, etc.).
• everyday people - the show has normal people who are thrown into an uncommon situation, which makes it easy to empathize with the characters.
• likeable characters - self-explanatory.
• believable - the show is juuust outside the norm. Enough to be interesting but not so far-fetched that every little thing is a new concept watchers have to wrap their heads around.
• instant hook - the show’s hook is near-instant. No “it gets good after 10 episodes” or “once the X arc starts in episode 180 it’s really great”.