"This girl next door...is super-muscular!"
"Dalia is scrawny and has an appearance complex. One day he passes by Ruby who looks cool and is muscular! “Muscle Girl” x “Tsundere Boy”. The muscular love comedy begins!"
The Muscle Girl Next Door is a short Slice of Life Webcomic series created by Amesuke Ano around college student Dalia, and his crush on his neighbour, Ruby: a tall, athletic and very buff young woman as he finds reasons to spend time with her, yet Cannot Spit It Out. It began as a webcomic on Twitter in October 2018, but was later serialized
on Gene Pixiv in August 2019. On June 2022, Seven Seas Entertainment released it as a Light Novel. Ano has since moved on to other projects but may return to the series at a future date.
The Muscle Girl Next Door contains examples of:
- All Love Is Unrequited: Dalia's crush for Ruby is so intense that he can't even look at her without coming off as standoffish. He needs his friend Shou to help get her number, and later gets really worked up about texting her. He even takes up exercise in spite of how unfit he is, because he knows that's what Ruby is interested in, and makes up reasons to continue doing it. It's implied that Ruby noticed he was interested in her, and also liked Dalia, but allowed him to take his time by spending time together.
- Amazonian Beauty: Ruby, who happens to be very tall and very muscular.
- Boyish Short Hair: Ruby.
- Cannot Spit It Out: The basis of the series is Dalia's inability to announce his crush to Ruby. Ruby also has a subtler case of this to Dalia himself.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Ruby is an implied case - she lifts massive logs with a single arm for "heavy trash day", and does a Wall Jump on a tree to get a child's balloon stuck up another tree's branches. Either way, she's very strong and very athletic. The Tagline even calls her "Homo Sapiens' Strongest Woman".
- Gender-Blender Name: Dalia/Daria is often a girl's name, but he is very much a guy - insecurities about masculinity notwithstanding.
- Has a Type: Dalia is implied to have one specifically for buff women - which Ruby is. When he describes her to his friends in college, he can only utter the words "very sexy", leaving the boys only able to imagine a more conventionally attractive woman.
- Insecure Love Interest: Dalia, who in his words is "weaker than an [average] girl", is smitten with Ruby over how "cool, and strong" she is, and can't admit his feelings for her.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Ruby: the weightlifting tomboy, with Dalia: the studious, frail young man with a passion for cooking.
- Muscle Angst: Dalia is insecure about being scrawny, unathletic, and unmasculine, so he asks Ruby on tips on how to get into shape. Ruby gives practical advice so that he doesn't go overboard and tells him that even for her, getting her physique was hard, and there are days that she doesn't work out.
- My Beloved Smother: Dalia's mother turns out to be this, having sheltered him as a child so that he can focus on his studies. Shou met him as he was studying and got him to be a bit more outgoing by playing football. This seems to be the primary reason for Dalia's insecurities around his unathleticism.
- Oblivious to Love: Ruby is very unaware of Dalia's feelings for her, at least at first.
- Only Friend: Shou is implied to be Dalia's. The latter doesn't seem to have many friends to hang out with. It seems Shou was Dalia's first friend, having met in childhood.
- Shipper on Deck: Shou offers to help out Dalia with his romantic woes by helping Dalia find out that Ruby likes to eat, helps them exchange numbers and even tells Ruby he wants her help to get into shape. The last bit was a lie, but Dalia kinda rolled with it.
- Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Ruby, to Dalia.
- Spell My Name With An S: Is it Dalia or Daria? Then there's Ruby/Rubi.
- Statuesque Stunner: Ruby.
- Supreme Chef: Dalia is an excellent cook, which is part of what gradually draws Ruby to him.
- Sweet Tooth: Ruby, to Dalia's surprise. She has a fondness for cake with strawberry topping, cookies and ice cream.
- Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Dalia gets himself flustered completely thinking about spending time with Ruby, even imagining casual sentences as romantic lines as they're just hanging out. It takes him by surprise when Ruby does start flirting with him.
- Through His Stomach: Female example: Ruby starts seeing more of Dalia when she discovers he's an excellent cook, while she is an average one.
- Tomboy: Ruby. She has boyish short hair, and is very athletic.
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Ruby's a total jock and even watches action flicks, but also likes sweet cakes.
- Tsundere: Male example: Dalia acts cold to Ruby at first, but it's mostly because he's head over heels with her and is really shy. Ruby takes his initial aloofness to heart but notices as they spend time together Dalia starts to open up more.
