One does not simply leave without saying goodbye.
While there are many segments of the story that will make you laugh and smile, there are just about as many that will make you cry.
- "To Hell and Back" at the end of Volume 1 is loaded with these these, but it starts off with quite a jarring shift in tone that really conveys James' despair. The moment he realizes he has woken up in his own bedroom back on Earth instead of Fluttershy's bed really hammers home how much he's come to love Equestria and his new friends over the past few weeks on top of facing the possibility that it may not have ever happened. Just to make it worse, the more he's reminded of all of the crap that happens on Earth, the more he longs to return to the far more innocent world of Equestria.
- It's not much better for the Mane Six as revealed in the parallel chapter "Tainted Memories" where things get darker and darker as the days go by. On the first day, they merely assume James had business to elsewhere. When the second day comes after his disappearance, they turn Fluttershy's house upside-down to try and find anything that could point to where he may have gone to no avail. By the third day, Pinkie Pie experiences unsettling hallucinations involving her Pinkamena persona preying upon her doubts of a supposedly mythical creature like a human having ever existed while Twilight has a breakdown when she comes to the possible conclusion that James may have been a shared figment of their imagination.
- Scootaloo coming out and admitting to James that she is actually an orphan. The fact that she had kept it a secret from absolutely everyone until that point points to some powerful insecurities she may hold on the topic.
