Ayu and Onegai?!?

Okay, I just heard the Ayumi Hamasaki song Surreal for the first time, and at about 2:12 the melody she sings is EXACTLY IDENTICAL to Shooting Star from KOTOKO/I've sound, which is the opening theme to the Onegai Sensei/Please Teacher anime. What the heck is going on here???

EDIT: what I'm talking about goes on for nearly a minute, and is unmistakeably a variation on Shooting Star (or perhaps it's the other way around, I don't know which was written first). Yet somehow I can't pull anything about this up on Google. Help!

Surreal came out for quite a while before Shooting Star and Onegai did. I just listened to both and they're a bit similar. I think it's only a coincidence.

Originally posted by Keiichi
Surreal came out for quite a while before Shooting Star and Onegai did.

Click to expand...

that's what I figured, since Duty came out in 2000, but I had no idea when Onegai came out in Japan (only that it just finished up here therefore it must have been one to four years ago there). Having gone back and listened to Shooting Star, it's not quite the song I was remembering. Its piano version, Tsutaetai Koto Ga Arun Da, is a LOT closer to what I was remembering.
This is just really interesting because, in Western (European pre-romantic) music, people borrowing phrases from other people's music was really common before copyrights, but it was more often meant as an homage (and considered such) than a ripoff back then.

OH~~! I love Ayu's Surreal song! I need to hear this other one.

The songs are so similar! it can NOT be by accident.