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Recently I have been watching the Sonic X anime, fansubbed into English by Wolf Pack Productions, a fansubbing group that does a lot of children's TV. Like many children's programmes, the Japanese-audio version is an almost completely different programme from the English-audio version, with tone, plot details, and character development diverging widely.

One quirk that only comes across in the Japanese-audio version is the frequency with which the eponymous hedgehog drops English expressions into his lines, much more so than any other character. I suppose back at home this supports his image as an example of hip, trendy youth. Indeed, language-dropping foreign expressions is a traditional way of identifying oneself with a social group, be it the cosmopolitan, one-Europe pretentious mois, or the dignified elder statesman quid pro quoing his way through life. But hearing Sonic sprinkle “No problem” and such throughout his dialogue reminds me more of Julian and Sandy's “That is your actual French.”

At the start of the series, it looks like it is going to be a celebration of the individual, after the manner of Rollerball. Sonic proves to be faster than very fast cars, and uses this speed to defend his personal liberty against capture by the police (representing the anti-individual force of society). But this doesn't come up too often, and as Sonic and his friends (and their new human friend, surprise surprise a young boy) settle into a kind of domesticity, it turns out that their behaviour manifests a quite different force, one much less often turned into drama. Between Sonic and the rest of the world, there is a speed mismatch.

Sonic in this series has some character traits that you may recognise in people you know in real life, or in yourself.

For a start, he follows his real-life conspecifics in being nocturnal. The credits sequence of each episode is composed of time-lapse shots of the friends falling asleep together in front of the TV: Sonic is the last one asleep and the last one left when the others have woken up in the morning.

Apart from Knuckles, who broodingly goes his own way, Sonic is the character most likely to be found on his own. When he's not participating in plot events, he divides his time between recreationally running long distances at great speed, and sitting in trees or on roofs lazing.

The first of these activities has more adherents than anthropomorphic blue hedgehogs. Elton John, in ‘The One’ (lyrics by Bernie Taupin) sings of the liberated feeling of meeting his amour as being “Like freedom feels when wild horses run.” I know what he means. Whether you're running, cycling, riding, driving, swimming, or flying, it feels good to go flat out, to put everything into that little bit of extra speed; better than playing it safe, better than pacing yourself, better than going the speed of the slowest member in the group. Machismo-oriented works like Top Gun and The Last Chase make much of this feeling, but they always give the speed-needing hero a competitive companion, a pace-setter for him to keep up with.

The second activity, too, is a popular one. Twain's famous character Huckleberry Finn would say, “Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.” Most people like to lie in the sunshine now and then, whether it's accompanied by light reading, pleasant company, or just being alone with their thoughts. I've spent many a pleasant hour on the boughs of a tree by the riverside, or on the grass in Grantchester meadows, where seventy years ago young chap named Turing was lying when he came up with an idea for reducing mathematical operations to a universal machine.

At first, I thought that these two habits were inconsistent. If we are to imagine Sonic as a person who gets bored easily and has to go out running to keep himself occupied, are we supposed to also accept that he spends a lot of time sitting alone in a tree checking his eyelids for holes? This would put him at both ends of the psychologists' intro-/extro-version spectrum.

But thinking on this point, I quickly found a parallel in real life that six million Britons should also be able to think of. Saki thought of it too:

‘He lies there, purring and dreaming, shifting his limbs now and then in an ecstasy of cushioned comfort. He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let sleep; and then, as evening draws on, he goes out into the garden with a red glint in his eyes and slays a drowsy sparrow.’

He is talking of the domestic cat, the animal that sleeps 18 hours a day and then, on a whim, goes out to pounce on some unfortunate specimen of the local fauna. I've known people, too, who yawn their way through the day, sleepily subduing themselves, and then, when their talents are needed, or when the feeling catches them, explode into action, becoming hyper, ebullient, or focused.

So, although Sonic has great support from his friends, he has to be independent and self-sufficient. No one else can keep up with his bursts of speed, and having to slow down for your companion takes all the fun out of it. And then, no one else feels the need to cool down, to idle the engine for a bit, in between times. That's what I mean by a speed mismatch, and it's exactly the same thing that you get in real life when people want to live at a faster pace than their friends.

Please don't misunderstand me. This “pace” idea is deliberately vague and hand-wavy. To be any more specific runs the risk of people thinking I am claiming that lots of factors, like attention span, boredom threshold, focus, hyperactivity, are really one thing, and that this one thing is a quality you're stuck with, and that it's really hard to make friends with people with a different amount of this quality. That would be bordering on the fatalist.

What I'm really saying is that all these quantifiables contribute to an overall feeling of pace, a feeling that some people live their lives stuck in top gear, a feeling that just being with such people is enough to make you feel tired. I'm also saying that friends (and family, and colleagues) should be sensitive to each other's pace, and try to make allowances for it: try not to let one person sprinting off disrupt the whole group, and try not to get stressed out when others are faffing about instead of getting on with it (whatever ‘it’ is). If you don't understand why your friend feels the need to write one article, plan another, carry on three conversations, listen to music, and prepare a meal, all at the same time; don't worry about it, they just need to run at higher revs than you do. Conversely, if you don't understand how your friend can spend so long just talking languorously; don't worry about it, they just need to do one thing at a time. As Watson came to accept Holmes's need to take on challenging case after case, or to compensate for the lack of stimulation with drugs, so can any pair of good friends reach an accommodation about such matters.

I don't know to what extent the variables that define pace are innate or social, but I do know that it naturally changes over time. and with the usual ebb and flow of mood. I heavily suspect that it can be ‘trained’ in the same way as cheerfulness or wit, by forcing oneself to slow down, or to speed up, until it becomes a habit; it seems likely that this also takes place in response to environmental or social conditions. But even if you find yourself stuck at the wrong speed and unable to change, then don't dawdle along impatiently, do what Sonic does, accept your need to spend time away from your friends now and then, and go tear up the road.