In the opening credits, rebirth imagery is utilized to question the separate identities of the organic and artificial. This is echoed where Kusanagi is floating through the ocean. Oshii draws upon baptism notions of being cleansed of a past identity and reborn into a new one, from that of a purely organic human to that of a cyborg. The question that Kusanagi explicitly asks aloud is whether there is a parallel metaphysical rebirth? Does she retain the essence of her humanity in becoming a cyborg? Thereis another layer of rebirth imagery connoting natural birth. At 05:13, 06:45 in the opening credits, the camera looks down a narrow underwater tube that echoes the birth canal, where we see Kusanagi float past, head first. The idea of a womb is also explicitly drawn upon in an image at 06:21 where we see her floating in a fetal position. The monochromatic and machine-visual of the black and green recall a medical sonogram of a fetus. The shot switches over to the natural lens as we see her as a flesh and blood naked woman floating in the water. This reverse transition from the artificial to the organic questions the hierarchy established of her identity of human to cyborg as a simple one directional trajectory. This implies an exchange at a metaphysical and ontological level, wherein pieces of her identity retain and transform themselves in the process. This imagery subtly lays the ground for Kusanagi’s monologue where she questions her humanity and the meaning of her identity as a cyborg.