On September 17, 2007, the day before the twelfth and final episode of the televised anime was to air on TV Kanagawa, a sixteen-year-old girl murdered her forty-five-year-old father in their Kyoto home with an axe. TV Kanagawa promptly cancelled the Tuesday airing of the finale for its similarly violent content, replacing it instead with a thirty-minute video compilation of scenery footage from Europe including Norway, played to August Wilhelmj's "Air on the G String". Newspapers such as The Japan Times and Mainichi Shimbun reported on the killing and episode preempt on September 19. According to Mainichi Shimbun, Chiba TV and TV Aichi had also cancelled their airings, with AT-X the only station remaining indecisive.
As the result of a murder case in September 2007 in Japan involving the murder of a police officer by his sixteen-year-old daughter with an axe, as well as the Japanese media relating the case to anime such as Higurashi, the latest episode screenings of both Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai and another anime at the time, School Days, were canceled by a number of stations, due to excessive violence. However, AT-X, TV Saitama and Sun TV announced that they would be airing the episodes as planned. Later, TV Saitama announced that they had ceased broadcasting of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai from episode thirteen onwards. Additionally, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai had its opening altered when it re-aired. Originally, a bloody bill hook cleaver (as used by Rena) was shown halfway through (at timestamp 0:55) the opening; it was replaced with an image of a van from the series' fictional junk yard.
