Do I need a license to make a non-profit anime streaming site? I am an experienced dev and my goal is to create an anime streaming site. I have made a custom CMS in Python but now need the content. When making the site, I soon realized that the content needs to be real and I don't know how to get it.

I researched further into the field and saw that I need a license to buy dubbed, subbed or anything related to anime. After seeing this, I brainstormed and saw that it only said that to BUY anime it cost this much. A site named Crunchyroll does this and earns money from subscription fees.

I changed my mind and thought I could make a non-profit anime site without a license. Is this true? I'm not editing, changing or adding things to the manga/anime and will not be earning any money off it.
Simply put: Yes, you will need to license your content.

Whether it is for-profit or free of charge, you are still dealing with copyrighted content. If you want to distribute this copyrighted content legally, you will need to license it. When doing this, make sure the license terms actually allow this kind of distribution. Otherwise you are operating no differently than other illegal distribution websites.

You may see plenty of websites similar to yours that don't seem to get mentioned. Take this with a grain of salt, a lot of similar operations employ various "tricks" to get around the law. Such tricks can involve hosting in a country with more lax copyright laws. Just because you see such operations doesn't mean your plans will go just as fine.

Of course, anything in the public domain is fine. There may be older shows where the copyright has expired, so you can get away with publishing those.

However what you don't want to do is solely trust some random dude from the internet. If you are seriously considering this kind of operation, then consult with a copyright lawyer.