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The Skyla battle might be my favorite of the Gyms so far in BW. Ash's team made sense, and while there was horseshit involved, it was in equal parts on both sides. Whatever quibbles I had were made up for by some neat dogfighting animation using a basic form of the 3D stuff they developed into XY. Plus it helps that Skyla is a very colorful character in the anime. Her game counterpart is more serious. You only really meet her once before the Gym, and that's when she's helping an injured Pokemon at the top of Unova's equivalent of Pokemon Tower. They do seem to like the "young, inexperienced female Gym Leader" trope in the anime though. Skyla's the third of four of them in a row.
This is needless speculation on my part, but the anime seems to love taking digs at the older, more experienced players of the games. GameFreak/TPC wants people to play the games by catching their favorites and winning with their buddies. The games are purposefully easy for that reason. Of course, that's not how people play them. Paul was an IV/EV trainer, focused on stats over using his favorites. Conway was the guy who brought a FEAR team, only to win against very inexperienced players. Tobias was the dude who brought six legendaries to a GameStop friendly tournament to bash a ten year old with six Pikachu. None of them are really portrayed positively throughout. Paul's an abusive asshole. Conway's a creep. Tobias is...well, he's actually a good sport and a gentleman, but people hate him for "cheating."
Skyla and the air battles are probably an amalgamation of different psychographics. She's obviously good at battling and knows her shit, so it's not like she's wrong, but she's clearly not a fun person to be around. Overall, she's probably a dig at the stereotypical Smogon type: Overly abstracted into base stats, damage calcs, and optimizing team choice, nature and move pool rather than just playing the game. With Gen 5 being when VGC started, TPC's attitude towards this thing changed.
