I don't really see why Evangelion would be bad to recommend to people new to anime. It has a lot of points where characters make bad decisions and don't communicate with one another and that can be frustrating for some people but tbh those people are probably going to not like it even after watching more anime.

Madoka... same thing kind of. The character designs maybe could be offputting to someone with literally no exposure to anime at all, but if someone is getting into anime because they like anime style art/character designs or something, I don't really see any reason not to recommend it. I know with Madoka people say stuff like... it's a commentary on magical girl anime so you shouldn't watch it unless you're familiar with the tropes, but I'm not really convinced by that either considering the huge amount of anime fans who like Madoka but never watched any other magical girl anime.