From a mainstream perspective, anime is arguably more popular than it’s ever been, with Samuel L. Jackson just one of the many notable Hollywood heavyweights to have revealed their appreciation of the art form.

In typical Jackson style, though, it wasn’t without an eyebrow or two being raised. When facing Wired‘s auto-complete interview, the actor was asked if he did indeed like anime. Answering quickly before bursting into a fit of laughter, he didn’t beat around the bush: “Yes, I do. Hentai, too!”

While some thought he might have been kidding, considering he made a point of shouting out anime’s more pornographic offshoot, that wasn’t the first time the actor had gone public with his two-dimensional preferences. In fact, he steered the conversation in exactly that direction when promoting Kite, the live-action adaptation of the anime of the same name.

Speaking to Comics Online, when it was mentioned that the source material is classified as hentai, Jackson took it in his stride: “Yeah, I know, I didn’t want to say that out loud. But why not tell the truth? I knew what I was stepping into because I am very familiar with the story. I’m willing to do what the story is about.” In addition, Jackson said he has “always liked the story and the manga/anime; I’ve watched it for years.”

The regular Quentin Tarantino collaborator even explained how his lifelong fan of comic books was the catalyst for his discovery of anime: “I’ve been trolling the comic book world forever. And through doing that, I got turned on to things like Ninja Scroll. Also, when I was in Japan, they gave me a big box of the stuff,” he said. “And I sat and watched a bunch of it, and knew what was going on even though it was all in Japanese. They hadn’t put any subtitles on it.”

There was even a widespread belief that he was a massive proponent of One Piece after a clip of his appearance on The Howard Stern Show was shared online, but that was eventually debunked as being manipulated by AI, not that it does anything to dampen his evident enthusiasm for the format.

As well as the aforementioned kite, Jackson also lent his vocal talents to the anime-inspired series The Boondocks, voiced the title character and executive produced Afro Samurai and feature-length sequel Resurrection, as well as voicing the robotic Zog in 2009’s Astro Boy movie, which was inspired by the long-running manga and anime series of the same name.

That’s quite the list of projects to display his anime fandom, even if Jackson doesn’t have any issues letting the world know that he holds hentai in equally high esteem as it is decidedly less salacious but equally graphic – albeit in an entirely different nature – counterpart.